Dual career in sport and non-sport work: Exploring experiences of North American professional female ice hockey players.

Grounded in role strain theory, this study explored the dual career experiences of North American female ice hockey players who were also involved in full-time non-sporting work, focusing on factors that produced and reduced their role strain. We interviewed ten professional ice hockey players who held full-time non-sport jobs at the time of their interview. Our reflexive thematic analysis revealed that the multitude of factors leading to role strain among professional female working-athletes were notably significant, spanning societal expectations and environmental complexities. The imposition of the superwoman persona, demanding excellence in both hockey and work roles, combined with inconsistent expectations from professional and athletic supervisors intensified stress and undermined well-being. The study's findings emphasize the need for robust support systems and adaptive strategies, such as effective communication, careful planning, and proactive self-care, which can mitigate these pressures. Furthermore, the athletes' narratives revealed a pressing call for empathy and flexibility from coaches, employers, and the broader sports community, suggesting that improvements in these areas could enhance the professional and personal experiences of these working-athletes. The findings provide valuable insights into the challenges faced by dual career female athletes, as well as current strategies aimed at supporting and enhancing their experiences. Furthermore, these results deepen our understanding of how professional female athletes in North America can achieve greater well-being by addressing the factors that produce and reduce role strain factors.

Assessing athlete leadership and cohesion using a social network analysis approach.

The study of athlete leadership has gained momentum over the past 15 years and is recognized as a vital component of team performance. Specifically, athlete leadership has been most studied with regards to its impact on the outcome of cohesion. As a result, a current gap in this area of research is the analysis of attribute data, such as tenure and self-reported athlete leadership, and how this attribute data is related to outcomes, such as cohesion. However, much of current research examining this relationship has utilized traditional statistical methods, limiting interpretation of data because team members are inherently interdependent. One approach that considers the interdependence of team members is social network analysis (SNA). SNA facilitates the study of social structures within networks of people, such as a sports team, as well as individual attributes influencing or being influenced by the network. The present study used SNA to examine athlete leadership and cohesion within a sports team of 22 female professional hockey players. Participants self-reported tenure, completed a self-rated athlete leadership questionnaire, and rated each of their team members on network variables of athlete leadership and cohesion. The results showed that high network density and low degree centralization was found for both athlete leadership and cohesion networks, with high indegree centralities for each team member. Further, a strong correlation was found between the athlete leadership and cohesion networks (p < 0.001), indicating a positive relationship between the athlete leadership ties and the cohesion ties. Lastly, significant correlations were found between self-rated athlete leadership and the networks of athlete leadership and cohesion. Together these data suggest that a cohesive team shares leadership responsibilities with many ties between teammates.

The implementation and evaluation of an athlete leadership development program with male youth ice hockey players.

The purpose of the current study was to implement and evaluate an athlete leadership development program in youth boys ice hockey. The sample consisted of 14 male U17 hockey players (M = 16.46, SD = 0.78) from one team playing in a competitive hockey league. The players participated in six leadership intervention workshops over the course of the season, and completed inventories measuring athlete leadership behaviours, cohesion, and collective efficacy pre-and post-intervention. In addition, a focus group was conducted to assess the impact of the athlete leadership development program at the end of the season. Bayesian t tests showed that the leadership program generally helped to maintain levels of athlete leadership behaviours, cohesion, and collective efficacy pre-and post-intervention. The results of the focus group following the intervention revealed the players believed the leadership development program helped buffer against the negative effects of their on-ice performances.

Athlete Leadership Development Within Teams: Current Understanding and Future Directions.

Leadership has been shown to be a fundamental factor influencing the performance of sport teams. Within these teams, leadership can be provided by coaches, formal athlete leaders, such as team captains, and other 'informal' athlete leaders. The role of the athlete leader in a team, either formal or informal, has been consistently reported over the last 10 years to have a significant impact upon a teams' functioning and effectiveness, as well as teammates' general health and mental wellbeing. As such, cultivating the provision of this leadership within a team has emerged as an important focus for managers, coaches, sport psychologists and scholars alike. While the recognition of the importance of athlete leadership is well established, there has been a lag in the development of systematic approaches to enhance and develop the leadership skills and capabilities of the athletes within sport teams. As a result, this paper seeks to review contemporary examples and current understanding of approaches to athlete leadership development. The paper will also highlight future areas for research and applied practice development.

The Testing of a Four-Dimensional Model of Athlete Leadership and Its Relation to Leadership Effectiveness.

Athlete leadership researchers have typically investigated three dimensions of athlete leadership behaviors, which include the meta-categories of task-, social-, and external-oriented leadership. More recently, motivational leadership was added as a fourth dimension. Researchers in organizational leadership have advanced another dimension, referred to as change-oriented leadership (Yukl, 2012). Therefore, in the present study, we tested a four-dimensional model that includes the dimensions of task-, social-, external-, and change-oriented leadership. Two samples of 161 athletes and 69 coaches rated every player on their team on the four-dimensional model and on perceived athlete leadership effectiveness. A multilevel regression analysis showed that all four dimensions of athlete leadership significantly predicted perceived athlete leadership effectiveness for players and three dimensions (i.e., social-, task-, and change-oriented leadership) for coaches. These results support the importance of change-oriented leadership in relation to athlete leadership.

Role Commitment and Acceptance in a Sport Context.

The objectives of this study were to (a) develop a conceptualization of role acceptance, later situated within the broader concept of role commitment, pertinent to the sport environment; (b) develop a measure integrating direct perceptions of role commitment and the bases of this variable; and (c) determine if role commitment could predict athletes' intentions to return. To accomplish these objectives, multiple methods were used across 4 projects that leveraged the extant literature on acceptance and commitment perceptions from sport and organizational psychology, engaged athletes in focus groups in a think-aloud protocol, and obtained responses on iterative versions of a new role-commitment questionnaire from over 700 athletes from a variety of competitive and developmental levels. Overall, this approach captured the bases of role commitment (affective, normative, and continuance perspectives), as well as direct perceptions of role commitment, and demonstrated an important link to intentions to return to sport.

Athlete leadership: a review of the theoretical, measurement, and empirical literature.

Athlete leadership is defined as an athlete who occupies a formal or informal leadership role within a team and influences team members to achieve a common objective. The area of athlete leadership has been shaped by theories and measurement tools from organizational and sport coaching literatures. The present article describes the conceptual developments within athlete leadership by providing an operational definition of this construct, followed by the theories and measurement tools used to examine athlete leadership. Finally, the present paper describes both qualitative and quantitative research that has emerged over the last decade. The results suggest the importance of this source of leadership within sport teams.

An examination of the relationship between athlete leadership and cohesion using social network analysis.

Two studies investigated the structure of different athlete leadership networks and its relationship to cohesion using social network analysis. In Study 1, we examined the relationship between a general leadership quality network and task and social cohesion as measured by the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ). In Study 2, we investigated the leadership networks for four different athlete leadership roles (task, motivational, social and external) and their association with task and social cohesion networks. In Study 1, the results demonstrated that the general leadership quality network was positively related to task and social cohesion. The results from Study 2 indicated positive correlations between the four leadership networks and task and social cohesion networks. Further, the motivational leadership network emerged as the strongest predictor of the task cohesion network, while the social leadership network was the strongest predictor of the social cohesion network. The results complement a growing body of research indicating that athlete leadership has a positive association with cohesion.

A comparison of well-peer mentored and non-peer mentored athletes' perceptions of satisfaction.

The purpose of the present study was to compare well-peer mentored and non-peer mentored athletes' perceptions of satisfaction. A total of 444 intercollegiate athletes (272 well-peer mentored and 172 non-peer mentored) from a variety of sport teams participated in the study. Athletes from both well-peer mentored and non-peer mentored groups reported their satisfaction levels using the Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire. The results of a MANOVA and follow-up post hoc ANOVAs showed that well-peer mentored athletes were significantly more satisfied than their non-peer mentored counterparts in terms of individual performance, personal dedication, team task contribution, team social contribution, team integration, ethics, ability utilisation and training and instruction. Overall, the findings suggest that athletes who are well-peer mentored by a teammate perceive higher satisfaction levels with various aspects of their athletic experience than athletes who are not peer mentored by a teammate. Given these positive findings, practitioners (i.e., coaches, sport psychology consultants) should inform athletes on the benefits of peer-to-peer mentoring. The practical implications of the results and strategies to promote peer athlete mentoring relationships in sport are highlighted.

The Art of Athlete Leadership: Identifying High-Quality Athlete Leadership at the Individual and Team Level Through Social Network Analysis.

This research aimed to introduce social network analysis as a novel technique in sports teams to identify the attributes of high-quality athlete leadership, both at the individual and at the team level. Study 1 included 25 sports teams (N = 308 athletes) and focused on athletes' general leadership quality. Study 2 comprised 21 sports teams (N = 267 athletes) and focused on athletes' specific leadership quality as a task, motivational, social, and external leader. The extent to which athletes felt connected with their leader proved to be most predictive for athletes' perceptions of that leader's quality on each leadership role. Also at the team level, teams with higher athlete leadership quality were more strongly connected. We conclude that social network analysis constitutes a valuable tool to provide more insight in the attributes of high-quality leadership both at the individual and at the team level.

Coaches' Perceptions of Team Cohesion in Paralympic Sports.

The purpose of this study was to investigate Paralympic coaches' perceptions of team cohesion. Seven head coaches of summer and winter Canadian Paralympic sport teams participated in the study. Four participants coached individual sports and 3 coached team sports. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results addressed the coaches' perceptions of cohesion in the Paralympic sport setting and strategies used to foster cohesion with their teams. Participants described using techniques and strategies for enhancing cohesion that were similar to those in nondisability sport, such as task-related activities, goal setting, and regularly communicating with their athletes. They also listed how cohesion was distinct to the Paralympic setting, such as the importance of interpersonal activities to build social cohesion. The implications of these results for coaching athletes with a disability are also presented.

Coach-initiated motivational climate and cohesion in youth sport.

PURPOSE: The general purpose of the present study was to examine the link between cohesion and motivational climate in youth sport. The first specific objective was to determine if relationships demonstrated in previous research with adult basketball and handball participants would be replicated in a younger sample and with a more heterogeneous set of sports. The second specific objective was to examine whether sources of athlete enjoyment moderate the relationships between motivational climate and cohesion. METHOD: Athletes (N = 997; 532 girls and 465 boys; Mage = 15.26 +/- 1.20 years) completed measures pertaining to coach-initiated motivational climate, cohesion, and sources of enjoyment. RESULTS: Bivariate and canonical correlations revealed positive correlations between perceptions of a task-involving motivational climate and both task and social cohesion, while ego-involving motivational climate was negatively related. Cluster analyses suggested that individuals perceiving a low task-involving climate and high ego-involving climate perceived their teams as less cohesive. Finally, the degree to which participants derived enjoyment through other-referenced competency served as a moderator in the motivational climate-task cohesion relationship. Specifically, the relationship between task cohesion and motivational climate was more pronounced for those individuals who were less likely to derive enjoyment through other-referenced competency. CONCLUSIONS: Youth athletes' perceptions of coach-initiated motivational climate are related to cohesion. This relationship is, however, moderated by the degree to which athletes derive enjoyment through other-referenced competency. Motivational climate is an important variable to consider within team-building protocols intent on developing cohesion.

A season-long team-building intervention: examining the effect of team goal setting on cohesion.

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether the implementation of a season-long team-building intervention program using team goal setting increased perceptions of cohesion. The participants were 86 female high school basketball players from 8 teams. The teams were randomly assigned to either an experimental team goal-setting or control condition. Each participant completed the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Carron, Brawley, & Widmeyer, 2002; Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985), which assessed cohesion at both the beginning and end of the season. Overall, the results revealed a significant multivariate effect, Pillai's trace F(12, 438) = 2.68, p = .002. Post hoc analyses showed that at the beginning of the season, athletes from both conditions did not differ in their perceptions of cohesion. However, at the end of the season, athletes in the team goal-setting condition held higher perceptions of cohesion than athletes in the control condition. Overall, the results indicated that team goal setting was an effective team-building tool for influencing cohesiveness in sport teams.

The effects of explanatory style on concussion outcomes in sport.

Individuals with an optimistic explanatory style have generally been linked with improved mental and physical health across a variety of chronic and serious conditions. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of explanatory style on recovery time and number of sport-related concussions suffered in the last 12 months. University varsity athletes (n=170) suffering from at least one concussion over the last 12 months from six contact or collision team sports completed both the Attributional Style Questionnaire and the Sport History Questionnaire. The results indicated that athletes with an optimistic explanatory style took longer to recover than athletes with a pessimistic or average explanatory style. More specifically, optimistic athletes who suffered a complex concussion (requiring more than 7 days to recover) took significantly longer to return to play. However, the results showed that explanatory style did not influence whether an athlete suffered subsequent concussions. Overall, the current results can be used to better understand the psychology of concussions, as well as concussion prevention efforts and management strategies.