Author(s)

Hongjie Zheng^1*, Takeru Hatachi², Masato Masuda³, Koichiro Aoki⁴, Chieko Kato⁴

¹Faculty of Science and Engineering, Toyo University, Kawagoe, Japan.
²Graduate School of Information Sciences and Arts, Toyo University, Kawagoe, Japan.
³Graduate School of Agriculture and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴Faculty of Information Sciences and Arts, Toyo University, Kawagoe, Japan.

This research aimed to analyze the mental level of different players. The targets of the questionnaire were administered to 32 male elite rugby players. Two different types of clustering analysis algorithms: SOM and Ward’s method were used for analysis. Results of SOM and Ward’s method were checked with each other. The two different types of clustering methods were a good match with each other. Furthermore, the results of SOM made clearer visualization than Ward’s method and could help us find more information about the features and relationships of each player. Although SOM had not been seen a lot used for analyzing in sports, this study confirmed that SOM is a very effective analysis method for the sports area.

Psychological Analysis, Rugby Players, Psychological Tests, Self-Organizing Map (SOM), Ward’s Method

Zheng, H. , Hatachi, T. , Masuda, M. , Aoki, K. and Kato, C. (2020) Psychological Analysis of Rugby Players Based on Self-Organizing Map (SOM) and Ward’s Method. Advances in Physical Education, 10, 410-420. doi: 10.4236/ape.2020.104033.