Irish Athletes’ Attitudes Toward Seeking Sport Psychology Consultation

Abstract

) in order to develop an understanding of the attitudes elite Irish athletes (N=240) hold toward sport psychology and also compare these attitudes with those found in other countries. Irish athletes in this study reported a generally positive attitude toward sport psychology provision overall, and also were identified as being open to receiving sport psychology assistance, reported moderately high levels of confidence in sport psychology, and indicated the lack of accessibility and availability to these services as distinguishing factors. Comparison of results with athletes from other countries suggested that positive attitudes toward sport psychology may be based on factors not directly associated with personal experiences of sport psychology. As the provision of sport psychology increases, practitioners need to better understand athletes' attitudes toward sport psychology so they can tailor their services to best meet the needs of athletes. In order to do this, further research related to cultural and national differences is required.

Attitudes toward sport psychology consulting in athletes: Understanding the role of culture and personality.

“…They found several differences between athletes from the three nations, with American athletes more likely to stigmatize sport psychology consulting than British and German athletes, and British athletes being more confident in sport psychology consulting, and identifying more with consultants of similar culture than American and German athletes. Similar studies were conducted with athletes from New Zealand (Anderson et al, 2004) and Ireland (Lavallee, Jennings, Anderson, & Martin, 2005), and it was found that athletes from both countries had positive attitudes toward sport psychology, and were open to engaging in sport psychology consulting.…”

“…A notable trend in the body of literature reflects how the vast majority of research done on athletes’ sport psychology attitudes has been conducted in Western countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany (Martin et al, 2004), New Zealand (Anderson et al, 2004), and Ireland (Lavallee et al, 2005); and there is very limited research that has been conducted in an Eastern context. This is a significant gap in literature, and several researchers (Anderson et al, 2004; Lavallee et al, 2005; Martin et al, 2004) have called for future research to explore the cultural differences that may exist between athletes from Eastern and Western cultures.…”

A Preliminary Investigation into Collegiate Student-Athletes’ Attitudes towards Athletic Trainers and Sport Psychology Consultants

“…Thus, it is likely that the exposure to the athletic trainers and the sport psychology consultants working in this institution may have shaped the attitudes and beliefs of the participants prior to data collection (Clement et al, 2012;Wrisberg, Simpson, Loberg, Withycombe, & Reed, 2009). Similarly, it is possible that athletes' demographics influenced attitudes in the similar manner that they have been found to influence expectations about physiotherapists (Arvinen-Barrow et al, 2016), and attitudes towards sport psychology consultants (Lavallee et al, 2005). Also, data with regards to athletes' coincidental treatment or consultation services with an athletic trainer or sport psychology consultant at the time of data collection was not collected.…”

“…Example items include "having seen a sport psychology consultant is bad for an athlete's reputation" and "a sport psychology consultant could help me fine-tune my sport performance." The measure has demonstrated appropriate levels of Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from .61 to .88 (Anderson et al, 2004;Lavallee, Jennings, Anderson, & Martin, 2005). The subscales of cultural preference and personal openness appear to have low reliability coefficients; however, given the small number of items that represent each subscale, the original author has indicated this to be tolerable (Martin et al, 2002).…”

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“…Note that scores for personal openness were calculated in reverse coding to measure the participant's willingness to take part in athletic training associated tasks. Previous research has described Sport Psychology Attitudes Revised-Form results as low (score of three), moderate (score of four), and high (closer to seven; Lavallee et al, 2005).…”