Atena Mehrparvar, Mehrdad Mazaheri
The purpose of the present research was to study and compare the psychological hardiness of athlete and nonathlete students. The population of the research includes all the female athlete (swimming and mountaineering) and non-athlete students of the Islamic Azad University, Zahedan Branch, studying in the period 2010-2011. The sample consists of 150 volunteers from the population that were selected using convenience sampling (30 swimmers, 30 mountaineers, and 90 non-athletes). The present research is descriptive and ex post facto. Bartone’s Hardiness Questionnaire was used for data collection. Chi-square test was applied to examine the psychological hardiness of the athlete and non-athlete groups. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between psychological hardiness and type of activity (athlete and non-athlete) ( ; ; 1). The results of one-way ANOVA showed that the difference between the two groups in terms of psychological hardiness is statistically significant at 95% confidence level. However, the results of post hoc testing showed that only the difference between swimmers and non-athletes is significant. Based on these findings, swimmers have a higher level of psychological hardiness than the other two groups. They can more easily cope with environmental stressors and one of the strategies they employ is psychological hardiness