Abstract
Much of the sports psychology literature is focused on improving the self-efficacy of athletes so that they can compete to the best of their ability. The purpose of the present research is to build on the self-efficacy literature by exploring the relationship between net size manipulation, during practice trials of a penalty kick, and the self-efficacy and performance outcomes of university students when completing a series of kicks into a regulation-sized net. The study had a sample size of 63 participants. Participants were assigned to one of two groups. Group 1 was asked to shoot 25 penalty kicks on a 4-foot net. They were then asked to rate their confidence in their ability to score on an 8-foot net. After rating their confidence, they were asked to shoot 25 penalty kicks on the 8-foot net. Group 2 followed the same procedures but started by shooting 25 penalty kicks on a 12-foot net instead of the 4-foot net. A series of t-tests comparing Group 1 and Group 2 indicate no significant difference between the confidence scores or performance scores of those who did their practice trials on the 12-foot net compared to those who practiced on the 4-foot net. Future studies may consider assigning participants to a group based on their belief of which net size will help them perform better, testing the hypothesis that net size manipulation will make a difference if the participants believe it will make a difference.
