How Should We Measure Psychological Resilience in Sport Performers?

Psychological resilience is important in sport because athletes must constantly withstand a wide range of pressures to attain and sustain high performance. To advance psychologists’ understanding of this area, there exists an urgent need to develop a sport-specific measure of resilience. The purpose of this article is to review psychometric issues in resilience research and to discuss the implications for sport psychology. Drawing on the wider general psychology literature to inform the discussion, the narrative is divided into three main sections relating to resilience and its assessment: adversity, positive adaptation, and protective factors. The first section reviews the different ways that adversity has been measured and considers the potential problems of using items with varying degrees of controllability and risk. The second section discusses the different approaches to assessing positive adaptation and examines the issue of circularity pervasive in resilience research. The final section explores the various issues related to the assessment of protective factors drawing directly from current measures of resilience in other psychology sub-disciplines. The commentary concludes with key recommendations for sport psychology researchers seeking to develop a measure of psychological resilience in athletes.     

Psychometric Issues in Organizational Stressor Research: A Review and Implications for Sport Psychology

Organizational stressors can potentially elicit a number of undesirable consequences for sport performers. It is, therefore, imperative that psychologists better understand the demands that athletes encounter via their exploration and assessment. However, although researchers have identified a wide range of organizational stressors in competitive sport, they have yet to develop a measure or indicator to assess them. In contrast, scholars in other psychology subdisciplines have designed measures of organizational-related stressors, which have the potential to inform the advancement of stress research in sport. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to review psychometric issues in organizational stressor research and discuss the implications for sport psychology. The narrative is divided into four main areas: conceptual and theoretical issues, item development issues, measurement and scoring issues, and analytical and statistical issues.     

Performers' responses to stressors encountered in sport organisations

Abstract

We investigated athletes' responses to organisational stressors. Ten sport performers (five males and five females) were interviewed with regard to the organisational-related demands they had encountered and their responses to these stressors. The main emotional responses that were revealed were anger, anxiety, disappointment, distress, happiness, hope, relief, reproach and resentment. The main attitudinal responses were beliefs, motivation and satisfaction. The main behavioural responses were categorised as verbal and physical. The data indicate that performers generally respond to organisational stressors with a wide range of emotions, attitudes and behaviours. The findings are discussed in relation to the extant literature and in terms of their implications for applied practice and future research. Consultants should employ reactive strategies alongside proactive approaches to ensure that performers are psychologically prepared to manage and cope with any demands that are not eliminated. Future research should focus on performers' cognitive appraisals of the organisational stressors they encounter.     

Balancing Head and Heart: The Importance of Relational Accountability in Community-University Partnerships

In this article we introduce a “head and heart” approach to community-engaged scholarship. Through the literatures of Aboriginal scholarship and engaged scholarship we reflect on a community-university research and program development project undertaken in response to health and education concerns of Aboriginal people in Canada. We suggest that the head and heart approach was crucial to the program’s success and provides access to an ethical space where multiple worldviews are recognized and where the importance of relational accountability becomes evident. We then examine the implications of this approach for engaged scholarship and higher education practices.     

Comparisons of cutoff and regression-based definitions of reading disabilities

This study addressed the issue of specificity in reading disability by comparing two approaches to defining and selecting children with reading disabilities. One approach defined reading disability according to cutoff scores representing appropriate levels of intelligence and reading deficiency, whereas the other approach adjusted these scores for their intercorrelation through regression procedures. Results revealed clear differences in which children were identified as reading disabled according to the two definitions. However, differences in neuropsychological performance between children whose reading scores were discrepant or not discrepant with IQ were small and nonspecific for both definitions. The results of this study show that children identified as reading disabled vary according to the definition employed; at this point, there is little evidence suggesting any specificity of reading disability according to definition.     

Communication disorders in the school: Perspectives on academic and social success an introduction

The critical role of communication in schools cannot be understated. Communication skills are a necessity both in the academic and social atmosphere of the school environment. Unfortunately, there are a large number of children in the schools today identified with speech and language disorders. This special edition of Psychology in the Schools examined issues that impact the academic and social functioning of such children. Several articles are focused on potential early intervention strategies or services surrounding literacy and social skills that may enhance the success of children with communication disorders and/or at risk for communication disorders (e.g., Chapman, Denning, & Jamison, 2008; Thatcher & Fletcher, 2008; van Kleeck, 2008). Two other articles tackle promising strategies that may be used in academic settings with children who stutter (Logan, Mullins, & Jones, 2008) or with children with cognitive impairments (Gillette & DePompei, 2008). Despite promising avenues of intervention and practice, there are also barriers to providing instruction to children with communication disorders in a regular classroom (Pufpaff, 2008). Each article provides insight into the importance of communication skills for academic and social success in the schools. The key to the success of children with or at risk for communication is for all school personnel to be aware of and proactive with children with communication disorders. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.