No description available.

Major challenges facing sport psychology researchers, practitioners, coaches, and athletes include understanding mental toughness and knowing how to train for it. Athletes and coaches have long identified mental toughness as an important attribute for performance. Practitioners have devised training approaches for mental toughness—often based on anecdotal notions of what mental toughness is and how it should be developed. The research available on mental toughness is scarce, with only a few recent but limited advances. Fundamental to the challenge of understanding and training mental toughness, there is a critical need for research to develop a model of mental toughness that is not based on anecdote, but rather on sound research methods and theoretical underpinnings. Following on from conceptualisation, there is a need to develop an instrument to measure mental toughness. Taken together, a conceptual model and a measurement approach are the tools needed by researchers to develop and test mental toughness training programs. The purpose of this thesis was to address some of these issues by capitalising on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods to: (a) critically examine a popular test of mental toughness; (b) determine specific characteristics of mental toughness and understand the interrelationship between those characteristics; (c) develop a model of mental toughness that draws together specific characteristics; (d) produce a mental toughness definition; (e) develop the Mental Toughness Inventory, a robust and valid instrument that demonstrates a sound factor structure, strong reliabilities, and invariance across gender, age, and level of competition (i.e., demonstrating within-network validity); and (f) determine the relative congruence between scores on the Mental Toughness Inventory and theoretically related constructs (i.e., demonstrating between-network validity). In line with these aims, Study 1 evaluated the psychometric properties of an existing, popular, and yet unsubstantiated test of mental toughness—the Psychological Performance Inventory (PPI). Given the breadth and depth of mental toughness as evidenced by the literature, the PPI was not expected to provide a reasonable model. Instead, the study was intended to inform the researcher on the psychometric strengths of the PPI and guide the development of a new measure of mental toughness throughout the remainder of the thesis. The PPI was examined using both within-network and between-network validity checks and responses from 263 student-athletes in Years 7–12 (12 to 19 years of age). Study 2 was a qualitative study that examined the interview data of over 30 elite sportspeople to determine the characteristics of mental toughness. The purpose of this study was to develop a conceptual model and definition of mental toughness that draws together all the characteristics in a way that adds meaning and clarity to the concept. The purpose of Studies 3 and 4 was to construct, refine, and validate the Mental Toughness Inventory (MTI)—a measure of mental toughness emanating from the findings of Studies 1 and 2. Studies 3 and 4 critically examined the construct validity of the MTI using both within-network and between-network validation on the basis of responses from institution-based athletes (from sports programs such as those run by the Australian Institute of Sport) and school-based athletes (from a selective sports high school). Furthermore, Studies 3 and 4 provided the scope to examine invariance of the mental toughness factor structure across groups, group mean-level differences, and interaction effects. The results of Study 1 provided a number of insights into the status of the PPI, raised an interesting conundrum regarding the interface between conceptualisation and instrumentation, and provided guidance for instrument development that would become the empirical basis of subsequent quantitative studies. The qualitative results of Study 2 unearthed a multidimensional model of mental toughness, containing 12 first-order factors each of which contribute to a higher order (or Global) mental toughness factor. The 12 mental toughness characteristics identified are: self-efficacy, potential, mental self-concept, value, personal bests, commitment, stress minimisation, perseverance, positive comparisons, positivity, task familiarity, and task focus. Study 3 involved the construction of the Mental Toughness Inventory (MTI), with results revealing excellent validity from a within-network perspective (including confirmatory factor analysis, goodness of fit, internal reliability, and invariance across groups). Study 4 results revealed that MTI factors correlated more strongly with theoretically-related concepts and less strongly with unrelated concepts—thus demonstrating between-network validity (convergent and discriminant). Study 4 also revealed a number of significant main effects of age (favouring older athletes), gender (favouring male athletes) and group (a contextual effect where institution-based athletes rate themselves more ―rigorously relative to strong contextual effects, which need to be carefully considered when assessing and developing mental toughness. For sporting organisations, this research points to a number of things that can be done at an institutional level—particularly in relation to creating an environment that is most likely to facilitate the positive development of various components of mental toughness. Finally, for research and continued theorising about mental toughness, the findings from this thesis support viewing mental toughness as a combination of cognitive, behavioural, and emotive processes that work together in combating adversity or pressure. Taken together, the conceptualising and empirical works conducted in this study are proposed to advance the field of research—creating opportunities to study the effectiveness of interventions designed to enhance mental toughness. Furthermore, the results provide practitioners, coaches, and athletes with a concrete understanding of mental toughness such that they are better equipped to devise training approaches and to handle pressure and adversity en route to athletic success. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

All too often, students in physical education classes are only accountable for tasks such as attendance, dressing out, and maintaining positive behavior. To shift the focus to content accountability, teachers need to utilize methods and techniques that hold students accountable for subject matter performance. Another area of concern for physical education teachers has been the development of accurate and easy to use assessment techniques. Unfortunately, most of the formal assessment is determined by the previously mentioned events of compliance. There is currently little formal assessment in physical education that focuses on student performance in the subject matter. Furthermore, for assessment to be authentic, it must be performed in an on-going fashion within the setting where skills were intended to be performed. Thus, this project utilized an ongoing, in-class assessment technique as a means of not only holding students accountable for their performance, but also as a means for the involved teachers to improve their use of formal assessment. Results of this study may have important implications for helping teachers develop skills to teach directly towards standards and benchmarks such as those developed by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE, 1995). The benefits of this research consisted of increased knowledge regarding effective methods of holding students accountable for their in-class performance in physical education. This study examined student performance, measured by the percentage of appropriate practice attempts of physical skills and student fitness engagement, measured by students' moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels during their physical education classes. Appropriate practice attempts have been chosen as the first variable of measure because of their strong correlation with student learning. Physical activity engagement was chosen as the second variable due to its relationship to health related benefits. It was hypothesized that there is a functional relationship between the teachers' use of an on-going, in-class performance assessment teaching technique and students engaging in a higher percentage of appropriate practice trials and moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Results of this study show mixed results in regards to using on-going, in-class assessment as a method of accountability for both skill engagement and engagement in MVPA. It was demonstrated that teachers using this type of assessment technique are capable of performing accurate assessments of student performance during instruction. / Graduation date: 2001

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 272-279).

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 38-40).

The purpose of this study was to identify competencies which are perceived as important by Thai adapted physical educators, to determine the differences that exist in the way physical education professors and adapted physical educators judge the level of each competency, and to recommend a set of competencies for adapted physical educators in Thailand. The questionnaire, Competencies for an Adapted Physical Educator in Thailand containing 59 competencies based on 6- point Likert type scales, was used in this study. The fifty-nine competencies were translated from the Competencies for an Adapted Physical Education Specialist, modified by Dempsey (1986) from the 1981 AAHPERD Guidelines for Adapted Physical Education. The meaning equivalence of the competencies was validated by using the Delphi method along with the back translation technique. The computed reliability coefficients of the questionnaire, using the Hoyt-Stunkard's technique was .9577. The study's population consisted of 31 College and university professors who have taught adapted physical education courses to college/university students and 40 adapted physical educators who have conducted physical activities for people with disabilities in schools and institutions for the disabled in Thailand. Data collection was completed in an eight-week period. Means, standard deviations, a t-test and the Bonferroni Method of Multiple Comparisons were used to treat these data. The results showed that 1) the competencies were perceived as extremely important by professors and adapted physical educators in Thailand, 2) the perceptions of professors and physical educators on the competency statements individually and overall were similar since the null hypotheses were not rejected, and 3) the relationship of both groups on the importance of each competency and competency category was high with a Spearman rank correlation of .7842, and .8857 respectively. Based upon the findings of this study, it was recommended that this set of competencies should be used as guidelines for the preparation of adapted physical educators in Thailand. / Graduation date: 1992

Thesis (M.S.) in Kinesiology and Phyiscal Education--University of Maine, 2009. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 12-14).

Dissertation (Ed.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 28, 2010). Directed by Jolene Henning; submitted to the Dept. of Exercise and Sport Science. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-75).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 638-657). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1930. / Vita. Published also as Teachers College, Columbia University, Contributions to education, no. 408. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: p. 67-71.