Evaluation of Rugby Players’ Psychological-Competitive Ability by Utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a decision-making support method for selecting a solution from alternatives based on a number of evaluation criteria. This method has also been utilized in recent years to evaluate athletes’ competitive ability regarding their physical, technical, and mental aspects. Therefore, this study has sought to develop an evaluation index of rugby players’ psychological-competitive ability as their mental aspects. Initially, a survey on sixty-seven male university rugby players was conducted using the Diagnostic Inventory of Psychological-Competitive Ability (DIPCA.3) for Athletes. Next, a rugby coach was asked in an interview coach’s to rank five factors of DIPCA.3. After that, total evaluation values of each rugby player were calculated using the DIPCA.3 scores, the coach’s ranking, and AHP. The rugby players were divided into two groups, those with high or low DIPCA3 scores. Then, members in each of these two groups were divided again into two groups, for high or low total evaluation values of AHP. Comparing the high and low groups from the total evaluation values, the proportion of rugby players in the high level group, who were regular players and had much experience participating in national competitions, was significantly larger among the high group than the low group. 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.