Examining the views of sport psychology consultants on mental toughness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sport Psychology Consultants (SPCs), coaches, and athletes have consistently referred to mental toughness as one of the most significant psychological features related to outcome and success in sport (Crust, 2007). The role of SPCs is often to enhance performance and well being of the athlete, including the development of mental toughness. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that in attempts to develop mental toughness, coaches may participate in practices that could be interpreted as a form of maltreatment. Thus we need to find a balance between developing mental toughness without the use of potentially abusive techniques. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of SPCs in professional and amateur competitive sport, with respect to negotiating these issues related to mental toughness. Six SPCs were interviewed using semi-structured interviews exploring their conceptualizations of mental toughness, and views on appropriate and inappropriate ways to develop this. Data were analyzed inductively with the identification of meaning units and themes. The findings indicated several different definitions of mental toughness although all participants agreed that mental toughness was critical for success in sport and in the athlete’s personal life. Additionally, these SPCs believed that athletes develop mental toughness over time, based on their environment. Lastly, all six of the participants acknowledged that in attempts to develop mental toughness, the coach may use inappropriate methods; in these circumstances, it is the responsibility of the SPCs to intervene and teach appropriate methods of developing mental toughness. Recommendations for future research and practice will be addressed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.027 | 0.057 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.022 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".