PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS AS PREDICTORS OF TALENT IDENTIFICATION FOR SPORTSDEVELOPMENT IN STATES SPORTS ORGANISATIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the psychological factors as predictors of talent identification for sports
development in States sports organisations in Nigeria. To achieve this purpose, survey research design was used
for this study. The total population was 4,573 in the six Geo-political zones of Nigeria. The sample size for this
study was 357. The instrument used was a self-developed questionnaire for this study. A descriptive statistics of
frequencies and percentages were used for the analysis of the demographic characteristics of the respondents, mean and standard deviation were used to analyse answers to the research questions while inferential statistics
of one sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study revealed
that psychological factor was rejected as it is one of the significant predictors of successful talents identification
among athletes for sports development in the states sports organizations involved in the study. This is indicated
with an calculated t-value (38.143) for the test and a t-critical of 1.96 with p-value of 0.000 (p < 0.05) obtained
at 353, degree of freedom (df). The calculated mean score (4.03) was significantly greater than the benchmark
of 3.00 level of significance. The researcher concluded that psychological factor significantly predict talents
identification among athletes for sports development in the states’ sports organizations in Nigeria. The
researcher recommended that talents’ identification requires monitoring from early age and mostly at
secondary schools and early part of tertiary education.