Return to search

Interplay of Race, Gender, Competition Level, Athletic Identity, and Psychological Distress: The Moderating Roles of Social Support and Self-Compassion

The current study consisted of 4,116 student-athletes (Mage = 19.84; women = 66.9%; White = 78.2%) to achieve two purposes when considering the disrupting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cancellation of collegiate sports. First, I examined the relationship between gender, race/ethnicity, competition level, and athletic identity. Though there were no significant differences across NCAA Divisional levels, I found a significant gender by race interaction with Black male athletes reporting stronger athletic identities compared to White male and female athletes as revealed by post-hoc analyses. Second, I examined the relationship between athletic identity and psychological distress and found that when social support and self-compassion are both low, there is a moderate, positive relationship between athletic identity and psychological distress for the White female athletes. Additionally, there were main effects for self-compassion and social support where higher levels were related to lower psychological distress among the White female athletes and Latino/a athletes. For the Black male athletes, there was a main effect for only self-compassion. There was a significant self-compassion by social support interaction for the Black female athletes and White male athletes, suggesting that when self-compassion is low, or high, there are higher levels of psychological distress experienced when social support is low. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137536
Date05 1900
CreatorsHayes, Carmyn J.
ContributorsPetrie, Trent, Jones, Martinque, Blumenthal, Heidemarie
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
FormatText
RightsPublic, Hayes, Carmyn J., Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

Page generated in 0.0018 seconds