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This study examined the effectiveness of a prevention intervention program to lower the incidence of injury for soccer players with at-risk psychosocial profiles. The Sport Anxiety Scale, the Life Event Scale for Collegiate Athletes, and the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28 were used to screen for psychosocial risk factors outlined in the stress and injury model (Williams & Andersen, 1998). Thirty-two high injury-risk players were identified and randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Injuries of participants were reported by their coaches. The intervention program consisted of training in 6 mental skills distributed in 6 to 8 sessions during 19 weeks of the competitive season. The results showed that the brief intervention prevention program significantly lowered the number of injuries in the treatment group compared with the control group.

A theoretical model of stress and athletic injury is presented. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the prediction and prevention of stress-related injuries that includes cognitive, physiological, attentional, behavioral, intrapersonal, social, and stress history variables. Development of the model grew from a synthesis of the stress-illness, stress-accident, and stress-injury literatures. The model and its resulting hypotheses offer a framework for many avenues of research into the nature of injury and reduction of injury risk. Other advantages of the model are that it addresses possible mechanisms behind the stress-injury relationship and suggests several specific interventions that may help diminish the likelihood of injury. The model also has the potential of being applied to the investigation of injury and accident occurrence in general.

The present study investigated the transcontextual process of motivation in sport injury prevention. We examined whether general causality orientation, perceived autonomy support from coaches (PAS), self-determined motivation (SD-Mtv), and basic need satisfaction in a sport context predicted SD-Mtv, beliefs, and adherence with respect to sport injury prevention. Elite athletes (N = 533) completed self-report measures of the predictors (Week 1) and the dependent variables (Week 2). Variance-based structural equation modeling supported hypotheses: SD-Mtv in a sport context was significantly predicted by PAS and basic need satisfaction and was positively associated with SD-Mtv for sport injury prevention when controlling for general causality orientation. SD-Mtv for sport injury prevention was a significant predictor of adherence to injury-preventive behaviors and beliefs regarding safety in sport. In conclusion, the transcontextual mechanism of motivation may explain the process by which distal motivational factors in sport direct the formation of proximal motivation, beliefs, and behaviors of sport injury prevention.

Two interrelated studies examined the role psychological factors play in the prediction and prevention of sport related injury. Study 1 involved 470 rugby players who completed measures corresponding to variables in the revised Williams and Andersen (1998) stress and injury model at the beginning of the 2001 playing season. Prospective and objective data were obtained for both the number of injuries and the time missed. Results showed that social support, the type of coping, and previous injury interacted in a conjunctive fashion to maximize the relationship between life stress and injury. Study 2 examined the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM) intervention in reducing injury among athletes from Study 1 who were identified as having an at-risk psychological profile for injury. Forty-eight players were randomly assigned to either a CBSM intervention or a no-contact control condition. Participants completed psychological measures of coping and competitive anxiety at the beginning and end of the 2002 rugby season. The assessment of injury was identical to that used in Study 1. Results showed that those in the intervention condition reported missing less time due to injury compared to their nonintervention counterparts. The intervention group also had an increase in coping resources and a decrease in worry following the program. Taken together, both studies underscore the importance of (a) psychosocial factors in identifying those athletes most vulnerable to injury and (b) cognitive behavioral stress management programs in reducing the vulnerability to injury.

Consistency tendency is characterized by the propensity for participants responding to subsequent items in a survey consistent with their responses to previous items. This method effect might contaminate the results of sport psychology surveys using cross-sectional design. We present a randomized controlled crossover study examining the effect of consistency tendency on the motivational pathway (i.e., autonomy support → autonomous motivation → intention) of self-determination theory in the context of sport injury prevention. Athletes from Sweden (N = 341) responded to the survey printed in either low interitem distance (IID; consistency tendency likely) or high IID (consistency tendency suppressed) on two separate occasions, with a one-week interim period. Participants were randomly allocated into two groups, and they received the survey of different IID at each occasion. Bayesian structural equation modeling showed that low IID condition had stronger parameter estimates than high IID condition, but the differences were not statistically significant.

During the process of health behavior change, individuals pass different phases characterized by different demands and challenges that have to be mastered. To overcome these demands successfully, phase-specific self-efficacy beliefs are important. The present study distinguishes between task self-efficacy, maintenance self-efficacy, and recovery self-efficacy. These phase-specific beliefs were studied in a sample of 484 cardiac patients during rehabilitation treatment and at follow-up 2 and 4 months after discharge to predict physical exercise at 4 and 12 months follow-up. The three phase-specific self-efficacies showed sufficient discriminant validity and allowed for differential predictions of intentions and behavior. Persons in the maintenance phase benefited more from maintenance self-efficacy in terms of physical exercise than persons not in the maintenance phase. Those who had to resume their physical exercise after a health related break profited more from recovery self-efficacy in terms of physical exercise than persons who were continuously active. Implications for possible interventions are discussed.

Instrument-based biomechanical movement analysis is an effective injury screening method but relies on expensive equipment and time-consuming analysis. Screening methods that rely on visual inspection and perceptual skill for prognosticating injury risk provide an alternative approach that can significantly reduce cost and time. However, substantial individual differences exist in skill when estimating injury risk performance via observation. The underlying perceptual-cognitive mechanisms of injury risk identification were explored to better understand the nature of this skill and provide a foundation for improving performance. Quantitative structural and process modeling of risk estimation indicated that superior performance was largely mediated by specific strategies and skills (e.g., irrelevant information reduction), and independent of domain-general cognitive abilities (e.g., mental rotation, general decision skill). These cognitive models suggest that injury prediction expertise (i.e., ACL-IQ) is a trainable skill, and provide a foundation for future research and applications in training, decision support, and ultimately clinical screening investigations.

Research on regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) suggests that performance increases if instructions fit with sportspersons’ dispositions. Sportspersons who chronically focus on wins (i.e., promotion-oriented individuals) perform best if instructions frame the objective as a promotion goal (e.g., “Try to hit!”). By contrast, sportspersons who chronically focus on losses (i.e., prevention-oriented individuals) perform best if instructions frame the objective as a prevention goal (e.g., “Try not to miss!”). Recent theorizing also suggests that regulatory focus interacts with task difficulty. In an experiment, we assessed soccer performance as a function of chronic focus, instructional focus, and task difficulty. Results support that task difficulty moderates the effects of fit on performance; fitting instructions to match the sportsperson’s chronic regulatory focus improved performance in the easy rather than the difficult task. Findings are discussed regarding the role of regulatory fit in altering subjective pressure during sports performance.

Targeted communication about health behaviors seems to be more effective than mass communication in which undifferentiated audiences receive identical messages. Regulatory focus is psychological variable that can be used to build two target groups: promotion-focused or prevention-focused people. It is hypothesized that targeting messages to an individual’s regulatory focus creates regulatory fit and is more successful to promote a physically active lifestyle than nonfit messages. Two different print messages promoting a physically active lifestyle derived from regulatory focus theory (promotion message vs. prevention message) were randomly assigned to N = 98 participants after measuring their regulatory focus. It was examined whether regulatory fit between the regulatory focus and the assigned print message would lead to more positive evaluations in the dependent variables inclination toward the message (preference for the message), intention to perform the behavior, prospective and retrospective feelings associated with the behavior (positive and negative), and perceived value of the behavior directly after reading the message. Hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that regulatory fit led to stronger intentions in the prevention-message condition and more prospective positive and retrospective positive feelings associated with the behavior in the promotion-message condition in contrast to the nonfit conditions. Prospective positive feelings associated with the behavior mediated the effect of regulatory fit on intention. The results partly provided support for the regulatory fit concept. Matching print messages to the regulatory focus of individuals seems to be a useful approach to enhance physical activity motivation. Future studies should include an objective measure of physical activity behavior.

Different people exercise for different reasons. Older persons may have different priorities than younger ones and thus are motivated to exercise by different factors. Given the changing demographics with an increasing proportion of older adults in the general population, it is important that we do not overlook this cohort when designing health promotion and illness prevention programs. Motivating factors for physical activity were recorded by participants (N = 916) in the Northern Ireland Health and Activity Survey (1994) using an extensive computerized interview. In 10 of the 13 motivating factors for exercise studied, there were significant differences between age groups on the importance of personal goals and the perceived efficacy of exercise in achieving these goals. This has implications for exercise promotion programs.