Marc Lochbaum, Fanny Arendt
This review provides a substantial, updated meta-analysis examining the relationships between pre-competition Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) and Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised (CSAI-2R) subscales and objective sport performance metrics from 1985 to 2026. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we found studies via a systematic search of the Web of Science (WOS) and EBSCOhost databases, as well as relevant meta-analyses. Random-effects models calculated pooled mean differences (Hedges' g) and correlation coefficients (r) for the primary analyses. Forty-eight studies totaling 3659 athletes met the inclusion criteria. The included literature using primarily the CSAI-2 spanned four decades of global research, featuring mainly individual sport elite and university-level samples of male and female athletes. Primary findings revealed significant pooled effects in the hypothesized directions across all subscales in both the mean difference and correlation studies, ranging from small to medium in magnitude. Prediction intervals were wide for all primary analyses, indicating high variability in future study findings. Of note, subgroup datasets for win/lose comparisons in tennis and martial arts, golf and gymnastics event scores, and individual athlete's basketball and volleyball statistics provided more stable results providing direction for researchers and practitioners. In conclusion, while the CSAI-2(R) remains a popular pre-competitive monitoring tool, wide prediction intervals except in a few subgroups necessitate caution. Practitioners should prioritize measurement of the CSAI-2(R) the day of performance with longitudinal, idiographic assessments to account for individual zones of optimal functioning and anxiety interpretation.