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- 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. 1 of 5
- 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. 2 of 5
- 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. 3 of 5
- 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 4 of 5
- 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. 5 of 5