Promoting Athletes’ Personal Development in High-Performance Sport Environments
Creators: Jorgensen, Helene
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2024

<p>The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to create new understandings of how to promote personal development in high-performance sport environments. This purpose was addressed via three studies. The purpose of the first study was to develop a grounded theory of how to promote personal development in high-performance sport environments. The grounded theory was derived from individual interviews with 32 members of the Canadian junior and senior national biathlon teams, including 18 athletes (9 women, 9 men, Mage = 20.8 years, SD = 2.9), five coaches (1 woman, 4 men), three technical leaders (2 women, 1 man), and six parents (3 mothers, 3 fathers). Follow-up interviews were conducted with five key participants. Straussian grounded theory methodology (Corbin &amp; Strauss, 2015) was used and involved multiple analytic techniques (e.g., open coding, constant comparison, memoing, theoretical integration). The grounded theory was based on the core category that personal development is a continual and individualized process and offered three propositions of how to promote athletes’ personal development process; (a) athletes used strategies of realistic self-evaluation and goal setting; (b) athletes experienced different situations and reflected on their areas for personal development; and (c) athletes perceived and received social support. The propositions can be used to promote athletes’ personal development in high-performance sport environments. <br>
The grounded theory informed the second study. The purpose of the second study was to engage high-performance athletes and stakeholders in the co-design of a personal development intervention for high-performance sport environments, called AHEAD. The AHEAD intervention was tailored to the sport of biathlon and developed using a logic model and the Template for Intervention Description and Replication checklist for Population Health and Policy (TIDieR-PHP; Campbell et al., 2018). Twenty-eight participants (15 athletes, 8 coaches, 5 technical leaders) were engaged as co-designers of the intervention and their input and feedback was solicited via focus groups or individual interviews. A qualitative description (Sandelowski, 2000) methodology was used, involving an abductive content analysis procedure (Elo &amp; Kyngäs, 2008) guided by the TIDieR-PHP 9-item checklist to analyze the data. Participants’ feedback facilitated the development of the AHEAD’s logo, activity bank, delivery format, scheduling, and individualized approach. This study demonstrated how end-users and stakeholders could be involved as co-designers of sport psychology interventions. <br>
The purpose of the third study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the AHEAD intervention. Sixteen high-performance athletes (8 women, 8 men, Mage = 19.3 years, SD = 2.2),  from a biathlon training centre participated in the AHEAD intervention. The intervention was delivered in-person over 10 weeks, involving three phases: baseline (2 weeks), intervention (6 weeks), and post-intervention (2 weeks). After an introductory session, the weekly intervention workshops focused on five behaviours: self-awareness, goal setting, reflection, perspective, and evaluation. A multiple-baseline across behaviours single-case study design (Kazdin, 2021), incorporating mixed methods, was used to evaluate the intervention and examine changes in personal development across the five behaviours. Changes were assessed after each workshop and post-intervention. Results revealed that perspective was the most effective workshop (10 participants reported improvements in this behavior), followed by self-awareness and evaluation (9 participants improved), goal setting (8 participants improved), and reflection (6 participants improved). Results from post-intervention interviews indicated that participants had positive experiences of the AHEAD intervention. Whereas certain workshops were effective for some participants, overall, the evaluation showed mixed effectiveness. </p>