Effects of Systematic Desensitization on State Anxiety, Fear of Depth and Interest to Continue to Sport Participation in Female Swimming Beginners

Fear of depth is one of the most important barriers to swimming learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate effect of a systematic desensitization on state anxiety, fear of depth, and interest in continuing to sport participation in female swimming beginners. By a semi-experimental research design with pre-test post-test and control group a total sample of 30 female swimming beginners (20-30 year-old) were selected through purposeful sampling method and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received regular desensitization for eight 60-minute sessions, whereas the control group involved in daily activities during the training period. Three instrument of the study: State Anxiety Inventory, Fear-of-depth Questionnaire, and Interest in Continuing Sports Participation Questionnaire completed in the Pre-test and post-test by both groups and data were analyzed using an Analysis of Co-variance test. The findings showed that regular desensitization significantly reduced means of state anxiety and fear of depth and promoted interest in the continuing sports participation in experimental group than control. The systematic desensitization have positive impact on female swimming beginners with fear of depth and is recommended to them which increase their interest in continuing sports participation as well.