Pain and negative mood during rehabilitation after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a daily process analysis.

Daily diary methods were used to examine changes in pain and negative mood over the first 6 weeks of rehabilitation after surgical reconstruction of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). Participants (58 men and 33 women) completed measures of personal factors (i.e., age, athletic identity, neuroticism, optimism) before surgery and indices of daily pain, negative mood, and stress for 42 days after surgery. Multilevel modeling revealed that, as would be expected, daily pain ratings decreased significantly over the course of the study and that the rate of decline in pain ratings decreased over time. Age and daily negative mood were positively associated with daily pain ratings. Daily negative mood also decreased significantly over the course of the study and was positively associated with neuroticism, daily pain, and daily stress. Athletic identity and optimism interacted with time since surgery in predicting daily negative mood such that participants with high levels of athletic identity and low levels of optimism reported greater decreases in daily negative mood over time. Overall, the findings reveal a pattern of improved psychological functioning over the early stages of post-operative ACL rehabilitation.

Exercising caution: social physique anxiety and protective self-presentational behaviour.

This study examined relations among body mass index (BMI), social physique anxiety (SPA) and protective self-presentational exercise behaviours in a sample of 86 female participants in aerobics classes at a university fitness centre. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing demographic and exercise-related information, the 9-item version of the Social Physique Anxiety Scale, and measures of two forms of protective self-presentational exercise behaviour (i.e., preferring to stand away from the aerobics instructor and wearing concealing exercise attire). Consistent with previous research, SPA was positively associated with both preferred exercise studio floor position (r = .31, p < .05) and clothing concealingness (r = .25, p < .05). SPA did not mediate the relations between BMI and either of the two protective self-presentational behaviours. BMI was a better predictor of clothing concealingness than SPA, but the opposite was found for exercise studio floor position preferences (r = .31 with SPA versus r = .15 with BMI). The findings provide an enhanced understanding of factors associated with self-presentation in exercise.

Sport psychology service delivery: staying ethical while keeping loose.

Although the parent discipline of sport psychology is psychology, the delivery of sport psychology services has its main roots in physical education and sports science (motor learning and control, skill acquisition). Thus, sport psychologists may look more like coaches than they look like clinicians or counselors. In this article, the authors trace the evolution of sport psychology services and contrast the temporal, spatial, and delivery issues of applied sport psychology with more mainstream counseling and clinical psychology. The looser boundaries of sport psychologist practice have both benefits and dangers, and the authors offer some examples to professional psychologists who are thinking of expanding their delivery of service to athletes and coaches.

The Sports Inventory for Pain: a confirmatory factor analysis.

This investigation was designed to assess the factorial validity of the Sports Inventory for Pain (SIP) which was completed by 182 undergraduate students. Responses were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis designed to test the hypothesized underlying factor structure. Of five proposed subscales, only the items for the Cognitive and Coping subscales reasonably fit the hypothesized structure. To improve the fit of the model, factors were allowed to correlate, and the worst fitting item from each of the subscales was removed. The modified model also failed to adequately fit the data. Lastly, the items corresponding to the worst fitting subscale were dropped from the analysis. Again, the modified model failed to fit the data. Discussion suggests a possible respecification of the SIP.

Attributions for recovery and adherence to sport injury rehabilitation.

The relations of causal attributions for recovery from knee surgery to recovery rate and rehabilitation adherence were examined in a sample of 34 recreational or competitive athletes. Subjects rated their open-ended attributions for recovery on the Revised Causal Dimension Scale (McAuley, Duncan, & Russell, 1992). Subjects who perceived themselves as recovering rapidly made more stable, personally controllable, and externally controllable attributions than subjects who perceived themselves as recovering slowly. Subjects designated by their physical therapist/athletic trainer (PT/AT) as recovering rapidly tended to attribute their rehabilitation progress to more internal and personally controllable factors than subjects identified as recovering slowly. Causal dimension ratings predicted PT/AT rehabilitation adherence ratings, but not attendance at rehabilitation sessions.

Sport performance attributions: a special case of self-serving bias?

In laboratory studies, it has been found that people tend to take credit for success and to blame external factors for failure. In sport studies, this self-serving bias has not been consistently demonstrated. Two studies explored factors hypothesized to account for differences between attributions made in laboratory and field settings. Study 1 was a laboratory experiment in which subjects performed a stair climbing task. It was hypothesized that these subjects would not make self-serving attributions because the laboratory setting had been designed to include features of athletic settings. Counter to the hypothesis, results indicated self-serving bias effects. Study 2 was a field study in which elite tennis players made attributions for their match performances. As in past sport research, self-serving attributions were not found. These results support contentions that sport settings differ from laboratory settings and that further theorizing is needed to explain self-serving bias processes in sport.