2023, Volume 19
Impact of COVID-19 and coping methods using text mining of taekwondo kyorugi athletes in Korea
Minsoo Jeon1, Hyosung Lim2, Hyeri Oh3, Hyo-Jun Yun4
1Department of International Sport, Dankook University, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea
2Department of Physical Education, Anyang University, Incheon, South Korea
3Department of Physical Education, Korea National Sport University, Seoul, South Korea
4Center for Sports and Performance Analysis, Korea National Sport University, Seoul, South Korea
Author for correspondence: Hyo-Jun Yun; Center for Sports and Performance Analysis, Korea National Sport University, Seoul, South Korea; email: hyojunyun@hanmail.net
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Abstract
Background and Study Aim: The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, which has spread worldwide, started in December 2019, with confirmed cases continuing to occur in 2022. As of July 7, 2022, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases was about 500 million, and the death toll was about 6.34 million. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020 and labeled it the highest level of infectious disease risk. The purpose of this study was knowledge both about likely changes facing athletes in Korea owing to the spread of COVID-19 and how they are coping with these – specifically taekwondo kyorugi athletes.
Material and Methods: A qualitative approach was chosen – an open-ended questionnaire was designed comprising four demographic questions and two questions addressing the impact of COVID-19 and coping methods. Questionnaire data from 184 adult taekwondo athletes were collected. For the text analysis, the latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling algorithm was applied, and the coherence score index was used to select the number of topics. All data processing was performed using Python 3.
Results: From the coherence scores, three topics were identified under COVID-19 impacts and two under coping, as most suitable. The derived topics based on keyword distribution probabilities and the topic modeling analysis were as follows: first, the key impacts on the taekwondo athletes caused by COVID-19 were confirmed as anxiety due to training restrictions, self-care due to game postponement, and career instability due to game cancellation; second, the taekwondo athletes coped with COVID-19 by maintaining their performance through personal training and preparing for matches through personal quarantine
Conclusions: In the event of a similar situation in the future, new ways need to be identified that allow for training as well as competition during a pandemic. Additionally, preliminary efforts should focus on how to minimize anxiety among athletes whose careers and livelihoods are tied to their sport.
Key words: open-ended questionnaire, performance, topic modeling, coping methods, anxiety