Although the “self” has generally been conceptualized as relatively stable in sport-specific research, events such as deselection, injury, and career termination have been found to negatively affect athletes’ levels of identification with the athlete role. Additionally, there has been limited research regarding competitive failure and its ability to negatively affect athletes’ levels of identification with the athlete role. The purpose of the present investigation was to provide additional evidence regarding the influence poor competitive seasons have on the malleability of athletes’ self-identity. Athletes were followed throughout the course of their season to determine whether athletes who encountered a poor competitive season reported lowered levels of athletic identity. Specifically, male and female NCAA Division I track and field athletes completed pre-indoor, post-indoor, and post-outdoor assessments of athletic identity. Contrary to previous research, the current study’s results indicated no identifiable relationship between male and female athletes’ season performance satisfaction and their level of post-indoor and post-outdoor athletic identity. Thus, the greatest predictor of athletes’ post-season level of athletic identity was their pre-season level of athletic identity, regardless of season performance. Given these results, future research should assess self-esteem as well as other potential coping strategies athletes might use in order to gain a better understanding of the effect encountering a poor competitive season may have on athletes’ self-identity.

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Injury is a common and emotionally painful aspect of sport participation for female athletes. Playing through injury is normalized in sport culture; unfortunately, this practice holds short- and long-term health risks. Self-compassion has been endorsed as a resource for female athletes coping with injury and is purported to result in better health-related choices. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of self-compassion in competitive women athletes’ self-care behaviours following emotionally painful experiences of injury. Participants were 159 female athletes ranging in age from 18-49 years who completed an online survey. Five measures of emotional pain were used: negative affect, threat appraisal, badness rating, emotional difficulty, and a composite score comprised of the previous four measures. Self-compassion was negatively related to negative affect (r = -.26, p < .01), threat appraisal (r = -.19, p < .05), and the emotional pain composite score (r = -.18, p < .05) but not to badness rating or emotional difficulty rating. Self-compassion did not contribute unique variance, beyond self-esteem and athletic identity, in the emotional pain measures. The emotional pain composite score was negatively related to self-compassionate reactions (r = -.23, p < .01), positive reactions (r = -.30, p < .01), and perseverant reactions (r = -.16, p < .05) and positively related to ruminative reactions (r = .54, p < .01), passive reactions (r = .24, p < .01), and self-critical reactions (r = .48, p < .01). Unexpectedly, emotional pain was positively correlated with stopping training (r = .34, p < .01), reduced training frequency (r = .33, p < .01), reduced training intensity (r = .27, p < .01), and reduced training duration (r = .33, p < .01) and not significantly related to responsible reactions or stopping the session in which the injury was incurred. Neither self-compassion nor fear of self-compassion moderated the relationship between emotional pain and self-care behaviours. Participants also completed an open-ended question in which they described in detail everything they did to care for their injuries. A codebook was developed and used to analyze the responses. Self-care behaviours fell into the following categories: diagnostics, rest, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, treatment, and training accommodations. Athletes reported using an average of 3.38 self-care behaviours - most commonly describing obtaining a medical diagnosis and undergoing treatment. Self-compassion was not related to the number of self-care behaviours used by participants or the use of any individual behaviour. Overall, the results suggest that self-compassion plays a role in women athletes’ injury experiences; however, likely due to the complex and multifaceted nature of injury, the relationships might not manifest in perfect concordance with theoretical conceptualizations.

The purpose of this study was to examine current kinesiology students' athletic identity, identity foreclosure, perceived task value in sport, and perfectionism. An online survey was distributed via email to current kinesiology students. The survey contained questions regarding demographic information and items from the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale, Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status, Perceived Task Value in Sport, Sport Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale-2, and Multidimensional Inventory of Perfectionism in Sport. Results of the Pearson moment correlations indicated that the higher the athletic identity, the higher the subjective task value, identity foreclosure, perfectionistic strivings, and perfectionistic concerns. Multiple regression analyses were performed to further examine the predictive power of athletic identity, subjective task value, and identity foreclosure for perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns. Results indicated that athletic identity and subjective task value were significant predictors of perfectionistic strivings. Results also showed that athletic identity and identity foreclosure were significant predictors of perfectionistic concerns. Future research should replicate the study using participants from different geographical regions. Furthermore, future research should consider a longitudinal and qualitative study to investigate the development of subjective task value in sport.

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The aim of this thesis is to produce a substantive grounded theory of junior-to-senior transition and as a result of this work, to provide knowledge and guidance for coaches, sport psychologists and other personnel supporting young aspirant athletes. Underpinned by a social constructionist philosophy, the research programme was designed to capture and interpret the social world of the participants and to interpret the perceptions derived from their own lived experience of the transition. The thesis consists of three studies which, in a concatenated programme of research, are predicated one upon another. In order that understanding in social research can be advanced, the development of theory requires several rounds of fieldwork, analysis and publication (Stebbins, 1992,2006). Thus the building of theory took place over the initial two studies, the first of which involved the in-depth interviewing of nine participants from individual sports (M age = 24.5 years, S. D. = 4.3 years). As a consequence of this exercise, rich data were collected, depicting the participants' experiences of the juniorsenior transition. Grounded in these data, a preliminary model of junior-to-senior transition was constructed using Strauss and Corbin's (1998) guidelines for grounded theory analysis. More specifically, the resultant model revealed a cyclical process: of learning, identity development and progress at transition. Inception of the process is characterised by immersion in the post-transition environment during the pre-transition phase, in which significant observational learning occurs via the use of more senior role models. This process leads to the identification of discrepancies between the actual (or junior) and ideal (or senior) self. This promotes a period of adjustment in which the behaviours relevant to senior status are incorporated within the self, bringing about a sense of readiness, or ability to cope with the transition. In essence, the athletes had sought to structure their pre-transition environment to represent that which they would encounter post-transition, thereby generating stability for their self-identity. The modification of identity, through the adjustment of behaviours and roles, predicted a competitive breakthrough, at which point the athletes began to think about the subsequent step at senior level, and hence the cycle of immersion, learning and adjustment continued. (Continues...).

abstract: ABSTRACT Elite experience and careers in judged female sports complicate the binary categories of retirement while they are especially exposed to cultures of abuse, pressure and subjectivity. This thesis is comprised of multiple voices and experiences from the elite female athletic perspective, including my autoethnographic narrative. Highlighted and discussed are the topics of sexual assault and abuse, family pressure on children to do and excel at sport, the National Team experience representing the United States and subjected bodies and judging. It is an aim of this thesis to culminate all of those factors in the final chapter and hold that the experience and the cultures of athletic identity within synchronized swimming, gymnastics and figure skating not only cannot be explained by current research on athletic identity through retirement but have the capability to retire undeveloped young women by overdeveloped athletic identities. Through a sampling of voices and experiences across different female judged sports, over three decades, the reader will observe similarities that cause these sports to have a culture of solidarity through the aspects they hold in common with each other. The narrative highlights pivotal moments in the lives of the elite female athlete within these sports, which add to the calculation of their athletic identities and the lack of their personal identities. Through reflection and analyses of not only my story, but the interviewees from my original research and that of Joan Ryan’s as well, I aim to voice a mutual experience of elite athletes. Consisting of multiple factors throughout many years we will see through my autoethnography, paralleling with other voices and experiences, how it all intersects and contributes to this: Who am I now and where do I go from here? / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2019