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Eating disorders are serious clinical issues that can have severe physical and psychological ramifications. Although prevalence rates of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are low in the general population, it has been reported that prevalence rates are higher among individuals involved in the athletic milieu. Unfortunately, based on the demands of the sport environment, these individuals may be significantly less likely to seek treatment for these disorders, thus may experience dangerous short- and long-term consequences. Yet, even when such athletes do seek help, they often receive psychological treatments that have not been demonstrated to be efficacious among methodologically sound research studies. This article clarifies the current state of eating disorder treatment efficacy so that practitioners working with eating disordered athletic clientele can adopt more ethical and effective treatment practices.

The purpose of the current investigation was to determine the effectiveness of writing down goals, as well as displaying them, on performance. Sixty-two college student participants were randomly assigned to one of the following conditions: no goals, unwritten goals, written goals, or written and displayed goals. Participants performed a free-throw-shooting task, dribbling around cones, and layups for 2 min (Mikan drill) in a pretest–posttest design with posttesting occurring 3–4 wk after the initial testing. A 4 × 2 (goal conditions by trials) repeated-measures MANOVA with the 3 performance measures as dependent variables was conducted. There were no significant group main effects or interactions. Results also revealed no differences among the groups in commitment, motivation, and perceived difficulty of their goals. However, significant correlations indicated that the more participants looked at their goal, the more likely they were to practice their skills (although this did not lead to enhanced performance). These results call into question the efficacy of writing down goals, although future studies need to verify this with different tasks and different levels of goal difficulty.