Witteveen, Sietse (2025) Influence of self-efficacy on performance in youth football players mediated by recovery. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Self-efficacy is known to enhance athletic performance, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. One potential pathway is perceived recovery, athletes’ subjective sense of physical and mental readiness, which may mediate the effect of self-efficacy on performance. The present study investigated whether perceived recovery mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and perceived performance in elite Dutch football academy players. We hypothesized positive direct effects of self-efficacy on both recovery and performance, as well as a significant indirect effect via recovery. Daily self-reports of self-efficacy, perceived recovery, and perceived performance were collected across two seasons from 42 male players (aged 15–20), yielding 12,035 observations. After mean imputation (≤20% missing data) and scale normalization, a simple mediation analysis was conducted using PROCESS. Self-efficacy significantly predicted performance (B = 0.205, p < .001) and was positively associated with recovery (B = 0.209, p < .001); however, recovery did not predict performance (B = 0.015, p = .507), and the indirect effect was non-significant (B = 0.006, 95% CI = –0.005 to 0.017). These results suggest that while self-efficacy directly influences perceived performance and is linked to perceived recovery, recovery does not serve as a mediating mechanism in this context. This raises important questions about the validity of self-reported recovery as an indicator of performance readiness. Future research should integrate subjective assessments with objective physiological data to better understand how recovery perceptions align with actual performance capacity. Keywords: self-efficacy, performance, recovery, youth athletes, football
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Supervisor name: | Neumann, N.D. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | None [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2025 14:12 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Jul 2025 14:12 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/5369 |
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