Self-Compassion, Worry, and Competitive Anxiety in Athletes: Moderated Mediation, Multi-Group Invariance, and Network Analysis

Reproducible analysis code and data for a secondary analysis of the Casali, Ghisi, and Jansen (2021) athlete dataset (N = 263, Figshare DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.13580624.v1). Three novel extensions are conducted: (1) moderated mediation testing whether self-compassion reduces competitive anxiety (WAIT) through worry (PSWQ) and rumination-brooding (RRS), moderated by gender and sport type; (2) multi-group structural equation modelling assessing invariance of the mediation pathway across gender and sport type; and (3) Gaussian graphical model network analysis with bridge centrality identifying key nodes connecting self-compassion and anxiety clusters. All analyses are conducted in R using lavaan, bootnet, qgraph, and networktools. Target journal: BMC Psychology.