Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-88). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-88).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-83).

The investigator undertook a study to determine the validity of the Brace Football Achievement Tests as a measure of real playing ability of individual members of the 1948 football squads of the high schools of Quanah and Childress, Texas.

M.Phil. / Previously, not much attention was given to vision and visual skills in the everyday sport setting. The attention that it did get was not from optometry and ophthalmology, these two were late comers on this subject, but more and more athletes and coaches are realizing the importance of vision in their sport performance, although vision training were done inadvertently in the past. Sport performance involves motor and vision aspects. If the motor section does not work efficiently, the vision section will be hampered; in return, if the vision section does not work efficiently, the motor section will also be hampered. For this reason, vision was investigated. In this study an investigation was done on 17-year old (n = 35) and 15-year old (n = 28) rugby players. The aim of this study was to determine whether the visual skills of the 17-year-old boys would be better than that of the 15-year-old boys. Both groups were subjected to a battery of eleven rugby related visual tests. The results obtained, show that in some of the software skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination and visual reaction time the 17-year-old group performed statistically better (p<0.05) than the 15-year-old group. The latter group only performed statistically better (p<0.05) in skills classified as hardware skills such as static visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and stereopsis. The results showed a general lack of visual skills. Sport specific visual training programmes will be needed to motor performance training if these athletes are going to develop in elite performers. / Professor Jannie Ferreira

M.Phil. / This study consists of three separate publications. The first article attempts to evaluate the difference in the visual skill level of professional versus non-professional rugby players. The software visual skills, involving skills such as eye-hand coordination, eye-body coordination, central-peripheral awareness, and reaction time, were examined. The results indicate that the professional players did out perform the non-professional players on all these skills except for visual concentration. Not all the results were however statistically significant. The importance of the above skills in the game of rugby is discussed and recommendations as to the implementation of vision enhancement programmes are made. The second study explores the importance of the ‘hardware’ factors of the visual system in the game of rugby. A group of professional and club rugby players were tested and the results compared. The results were also compared with the established norms for elite athletes. The findings indicate no significant difference in hardware skills between professional and club players. Compared with the norms for elite athletes, performance of most of the rugby players were average or even worse. This suggests that in the game of rugby the hardware skills may be of lesser importance and that visual enhancement programmes should focus more on improving the players’ software skills. The hardware visual skills should not be neglected though because these provide a base from where the software skills can develop. Thirdly we wanted to determine whether there are a statistically significantly difference between the visual skill levels of forward and back line players in rugby and whether they performed visually according to the norms established for elite athletes. The results indicates that there is much room for improvement for both forward and back line players in eye-hand coordination, visual concentration and central-peripheral awareness because these skills, play an important role in a sport like rugby and because the players under performed according to the established norms. Thus attention should be given to develop the hardware visual skills like accommodation and fusion to an average level of performance, to eliminate any potential limits on the software visual skills. Consistent, position specific visual training should be incorporated in the daily training routine of these players to develop the software visual skills to their full potential. / Prof. Jannie Ferreira

Generic models of job stress, such as the Job Strain Model (JSM), have recently been criticised for focusing on a small number of general work characteristics while ignoring those that are occupation-specific (Sparks & Cooper, 1999). However this criticism is based on limited research that has not examined the relative influence of all three dimensions of the JSM - job demand, job control and social support - and job-specific stressors. The JSM is the most commonly used model underpinning large-scale occupational stress research (Fox, Dwyer, & Ganster, 1993) and is regarded as the most influential model in the research on the psycho-social work environment, stress and disease in recent times (Kristensen, 1995). This thesis addresses the lack of information on the relative influence of the JSM and job-specific stressors by assessing the capacity of an augmented JSM to predict the strain experienced by managers and professional Australian footballers. The augmented JSM consisted of job-specific stressors in addition to the generic components of the model. Managers and professional Australian footballers represent two very different occupational groups. While the day-today roles of a manager include planning, organising, monitoring and controlling (Carroll & Gillen, 1987), the working life of a professional Australian footballer revolves around preparing for and playing football (Shanahan, 1998). It was expected that the large differences in the work undertaken by managers and professional Australian footballers would maximise the opportunities for identifying job-specific stressors and measuring the extent that these vary from one group to the next. The large disparity between managers and professional footballers was also used to assess the cross-occupational versatility of the JSM when it had been augmented by job-specific stressors. This thesis consisted of three major studies. Study One involved a survey of Australian managers, while studies Two and Three focused on professional Australian footballers. The latter group was under-represented in the literature, and as a result of the lack of information on the stressors commonly experienced by this group, an in-depth qualitative study was undertaken in Study Two. The results from Study Two then informed the survey of professional footballers that was conducted in Study Three. Contrary to previous research examining the relative influence of generic and job-specific stressors, the results only provided moderate support for augmenting the JSM with job-specific stressors. Instead of supporting the versatility of the augmented JSM, the overall findings reinforced the broad relevance of the original JSM. Of the four health outcomes measured in Studies One and Three, there was only one - the psychological health of professional Australian footballers - where the proportion of total variance explained by job-specific stressors exceeded 13%. Despite the generally strong performance of the JSM across the two occupational groups, the importance of demand, control and support diminished when examining the less conventional occupation of professional football. The generic model was too narrow to capture the highly specific work characteristics that are important for this occupational group and, as a result, the job-specific stressors explained significantly more of the strain over and above that already provided by the generic model. These findings indicate that when investigating the stressors experienced by conventional occupational groups such as managers, the large amount resources required to identify job-specific stressors are unlikely to be cost-effective. In contrast, the influence of the more situation specific stressors is significantly greater in unconventional occupations and thus the benefits of identifying these non-generic stressors are more likely to outweigh the costs. Studies One and Three identified strong connections between job-specific stressors and important characteristics of the occupation being studied. These connections were consistent with previous research and suggest that before attempting to identify job-specific stressors, researchers need to first become familiar with the nature and context of the occupation. The final issue addressed in this thesis was the role of work and non-work support. The findings indicate that the support provided by supervisors and colleagues was a significant predictor of wellbeing for both managers and professional footballers. In contrast, the level of explained strain accounted for by non-work support was not significant. These results indicate that when developing strategies to protect and enhance employee well-being, particular attention should be given to monitoring and, where necessary, boosting the effectiveness of work-based support. The findings from this thesis have been fed back to the management and sporting communities via conference presentations and peer-reviewed journals (refer pp 220-221). All three studies have been presented at national and international conferences and, overall, were well received by participants. Similarly, the methods, results and major findings arising from Studies One and Two have been critiqued by anonymous reviewers from two international journals. These papers have been accepted for publication in 2001 and 2002 and feedback from the reviewers indicates that the findings represent a significant and unique contribution to the literature. The results of Study Three are currently under review by a sports psychology journal.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-274).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed Jan. 22, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-71).

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