Coaches' perceptions of athletes' stress-related growth following sport injury

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Abstract

Objective

The objective of this study was to examine coaches' perceptions of athletes' stress-related growth following sport injury.

Design

Qualitative inquiry, grounded in a post-positivism paradigm was used to gain an in-depth understanding of the study's objective.

Method

A purposeful sample of eight coaches (M age = 45.7; SD = 11.2) were interviewed across different sports and competitive standards. The semi-structured life world interviews were analysed using content analysis, and two trustworthiness procedures were employed to bolster the rigour of the findings (i.e., peer-debriefing and member checking).

Results

Findings revealed four general dimensions of stress-related growth: personal growth (e.g., beliefs), psychological growth (e.g., sporting qualities), social growth (e.g., social support), and physical growth (e.g., strength). The coaches also reported a number of behavioural indicators that reflected the four general dimensions (e.g., health and performance).

Conclusions

Findings ‘validate’ or provide coherence with athletes' self-reports of stress-related growth in previous research and also extend the literature by identifying a number of novel types of growth and perceived behavioural correlates. Future avenues of research include the need to conduct prospective studies and explore related concepts (e.g., vicarious stress-related growth).

Highlights

► We examined coaches' perceptions of athletes' stress-related growth following injury. ► Four dimensions of growth were found: personal, psychological, social, and physical. ► Behavioural indicators that reflected the four dimensions of growth were found. ► These findings have implications for those working with injured athletes.

Section snippets

Philosophical orientation

This study was grounded in a post-positivism paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). Adopting this paradigm had a number of implications for this study, from the beliefs or assumptions regarding ontology and epistemology (i.e., critical realism and modified dualism/objectivism) to the methodology, including choice of method (i.e., semi-structured life world interview that was literature driven and standard across participants), data collection (i.e., ‘one-shot’ interviews), data analysis (e.g., the

Results

The findings are divided into two sections. The first section, Coaches' Perceptions of Athletes' Stress-Related Growth, provides insights into the participants' perceptions of growth in athletes they had coached. Although each of the participants' ultimately perceived injury to be a negative event with debilitating consequences, they all suggested that it could provide a platform for SRG. The injuries observed by the coaches included a range of fractures, dislocations, strains, and sprains of

Personal growth

Personal growth consisted of seven higher-order themes: beliefs, values, attitude, knowledge, priorities, outlook, and general qualities (see Fig. 1). In terms of beliefs, the coaches reported that the athletes they had coached had developed and/or refined certain general beliefs following their recovery from injury. These beliefs were that hard work pays off in the end (i.e., adhering to one's rehabilitation programme expedites recovery) and one can overcome injury. Nick (trampolining coach)

Discussion

The aim of this study was to examine coaches' perceptions of athletes' SRG following sport injury. Coaches reported various types of SRG following injury that were reflective of athletes' perceptions of growth in previous research (e.g., Podlog & Eklund, 2006; Udry et al., 1997; Wadey et al., 2011), thereby supporting Wiese-Bjornstal et al.'s (1998) integrated model and providing a degree of coherence between athletes and coaches self-reports across studies. Specifically, the coaches described

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the three anonymous referees for their insightful and helpful comments on the earlier draft.

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