1. Athletic Insight http://www.athleticinsight.com/
Volume 11, Issue 1 - March, 2009
The Associations of Competitive Trait Anxiety and
Personal Control with Burnout in Sport
Mark W. Aoyagi
University of Denver
Kevin L. Burke
East Tennessee State University
Barry Joyner, Charles J. Hardy, & Michelle S. Hamstra
Georgia Southern University
The incidence of athlete burnout among competitive athletes
from youth, high school, and collegiate age groups as well as
the associations between competitive trait anxiety and personal
control with athlete burnout were explored.
The sample consisted of 153 competitive athletes (58 men, 95
women) from three age groups. The Eades Athlete Burnout
Inventory (Eades, 1990), Sport Anxiety Scale (Smith, Smoll, &
Schutz, 1990), and a modified version of the Control Over
One's Sport Environment scale (Tetrick & Larocco, 1987) were
completed by 30 youth (ages 10-13 years), 67 high school
(ages 14-18 years), and 56 college (ages 18-22 years)
athletes. Also, a directional scale was added to the Sport
Anxiety Scale on which athletes rated the extent to which items
were perceived as helpful or hurtful to performance.
Results revealed that overall the sample reported a low
incidence of burnout (M = 62.88, SD = 33.67). A moderate to
strong positive relationship (r = .645) between athlete burnout
and competitive trait anxiety was found as well as a moderate
negative correlation (r = -.433) between athlete burnout and
perceived control.
Youth athletes (M = 28.21, SD = 18.41) scored significantly (p
< .05) lower on the EABI than high school (M = 69.66, SD =
21.93) and college (M= 72.95, SD = 39.24) athletes, and
women (M = 68.89, SD = 37.49) reported significantly (p < .
05) higher burnout scores than men (M = 52.19, SD = 22.19).
Somatic anxiety was perceived to be helpful to performance (M
= 2.50, SD = 12.95) while worry (M = -1.75, SD = 11.34) and
concentration disruption (M = -1.01, SD = 8.54) were
perceived as detrimental to performance. Implications of results
and directions for future research are discussed.
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2. Bullying and Victimization among Adolescent Girl
Athletes
Anthony A. Volk & Larissa Lagzdins
Department of Child and Youth Studies
Brock University
Ontario, Canada
The goal of the present study was to examine the prevalence of
bullying and victimization in adolescent girl athletes. The
participants in this study were 69 girls of ages 12-15 who were
members of off-school competitive athletic clubs.
Participants completed a series of written questionnaires
detailing their athletic participation, aspects of their sport and
school, and their participation as a bully or victim within their
sport and school.
Prevalence rates of bullying and victimization at school were
two to three times higher for the female athletes when
compared to average prevalence rates of a separate national
study of female bullying. Bullying and victimization were more
prevalent at school than at sports.
We suggest that “girl culture”, learned aggression, and/or
withdrawal from school may cause the high prevalence rates
observed among the adolescent girl athletes in this study.
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3. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713768823
Volume 21 Issue 3 2009
Goal-Setting Effects in Elite and Nonelite Boxers
Authors: Michael O'Brien a; Stephen Mellalieu b; Sheldon Hanton c
Affiliations: a Coleg Gorseinon,
b
Swansea University,
c
University of Wales Institute Cardiff,
Abstract
Using a goal-setting model (Burton, Naylor, & Holliday, 2001),
the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a goal-
setting intervention upon performance as a function of skill
level.
A multiple-baseline across-individuals single subject design was
employed with 3 elite and 3 nonelite male boxers aged between
15-17 years (M = 16; SD = 1). Self-generated performance
behaviors, competition outcome, competitive anxiety intensity
and direction, and self-confidence were measured across a
competitive season (10-fight period). Retention was also
examined following treatment withdrawal (2-fight period).
During and after the goal program was completed, the elite
participants displayed consistent improvements in targeted
behaviors, more facilitative interpretations of anxiety
symptoms, and greater self-confidence, whereas the nonelite
revealed inconsistent patterns. Postintervention, five out of the
six boxers showed improvement in the percentage of fights
won.
The results highlight the diverse effects of goal-setting for
different populations, with social validation data suggesting
potential mechanism via the goal-setting model employed and
changes to attentional focus.
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4. International Journal of Sports Psychology
http://www.ijsp-online.com/content/abstracts/
Volume 39, January 2008.
Nature prevails over nurture
VASSILIS KLISSOURAS, NICOS GELADAS and MARIA KOSKOLOU
Ergophysiology Laboratory, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Quantitative genetics using the twin model offers a unique and
powerful method of disentangling the relative power of Nature
and Nurture, genes and environment, in the variation observed
in phenotypes related to sport performance. The model makes
use of monozygotic (MZ) twins who have identical heredity and
dizygotic (DZ) twins who share half of their genes. From
comparisons of intrapair differences between MZ & DZ twins we
derive heritability (h2) estimates, which signify the extent to
which heredity affects the variation of a given phenotype.
There is accumulating evidence to show that individual
differences in most functional abilities, morphological
characteristics, motor attributes, personality and cognitive
traits linked to superior sport performance are substantially
influenced by genetic factors. H2 reported by twin studies
suggest that genetic influence is so ubiquitous and persuasive
that we ask not what is heritable but what is not heritable.
However, a high h2 of a given phenotype does not exclude
environmental influence.
Nature and Nurture are indeed inseparable and phenotypes
reflect the effects of genes as well as those of epigenetic
influences, the most potent of which is training. Training can
produce results within the variability allowed by the genotype,
but cannot erase individual differences which are due to innate
ability. Deliberate effortful practice is a prerequisite for the
actualization of an athlete’s genetic potential. If the
environmental forces were optimized, the only decisive factor to
peak sport performance would be the gentoype. Yet, though
genes and training may set the biophysical limits to human
performance, there is evidence that it is behavioral features
which determine the ultimate frontiers of sport performance.
The postulate that in addition to superior genotypes athletes of
olympic caliber have also inherited genes which mediate a high
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5. response to training, is not tenable. To unravel the complex
etiology of individual differences in sport performance we need
to continue using techniques from quantitative genetics for the
selection of candidate genes and tools from molecular genetics,
now available, for identification of genes of performance
phenotypes. Although there is a long way to go before we have
a clear picture of the human gene map for sport performance
traits, a number of laboratories and scientists concerned by the
role of genes and DNA sequence variation in sport performance
is rising.
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