An Evaluation of Psychological-Competitive Ability for Rugby Players Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is the decision-making support method in order to select a solution from alternatives based on a number of evaluation criteria. This method has been also utilized to evaluate athletes' competitive ability regarding their physical, technical, and mental aspects in recent years. Therefore, this study tried to develop an evaluation index of Rugby players' psychological-competitive ability as their mental aspects. At first, a questionnaire survey on sixty-seven male university rugby players was conducted using Diagnostic Inventory of Psychological-Competitive Ability for Athletes (DIPCA.3). Next, an interview survey on a Rugby coach was carried out for ranking five factors of DIPCA.3 depending on each factor's importance. After that, total evaluation values of each Rugby player were calculated from the scores of DIPCA.3 and the ranking of five factors. The Rugby players were divided into high or low group in accordance with their total scores of DIPCA.3 or total evaluation values of AHP. Comparing the high and low group of the total evaluation values, the proportion of Rugby players on a high level, who were regular players and had many experience of participating in national competitions, was larger among the high group than the low group significantly. The results of this study suggested that the total evaluation value calculated with AHP was more effective than the total scores of DIPCA.3 for evaluation of Rugby players' mental aspects.