A penny for your thoughts:athletes’ and trainee sport psychologists’ internal dialogue during consultations

The purpose of this study was to explore the internal dialogue of trainee sport psychologists (TSPs) and athletes immediately following athlete–practitioner consultations. TSPs (four male and three female, age 22–32 years) and athletes (four male, three female, age 19–29 years) completed a thought-listing procedure twice, while watching video recordings of their previous consultations. The thought-listing procedure involved participants’ pausing the video to record the in-session internal dialogue they had experienced during the consultation. Participants’ responses were categorized into six dimensions: time, place, focus, locus, orientation, and mode. TSPs’ and athletes’ retrospective accounts provided evidence that their in-session internal dialogue was (a) present focused, (b) about in-session material, (c) about the athletes or themselves, (d) about internal and external events, (e) professional (i.e., related to the session), and (f) neutral. Findings provide trainees and inexperienced practitioners with insights into the thought content of TSPs and athletes to guide their own athlete interactions

A qualitative analysis of Swedish sport psychology practitioners’ experience of a continued professional development program

Although sport psychology practitioners and researchers acknowledge the importance of continued professional development (CPD) for professional effectiveness and excellence, few studies have explored the influence of CPD activities on the practitioners' practice and thinking. This study examined qualified Swedish sport psychology practitioners' experiences of engaging in a CPD program and how it impacted their professional development. The Swedish Sports Confederation offers a CPD program that targets performance enhancement services and psychotherapy for sport psychology practitioners. We explored the influence of this CPD program on the professional development of 13 graduates (five females; age in years: M = 41.2, SD = 8.3) via semi-structured interviews. Our stance involved a realist ontology and constructionist epistemology. We followed the six-step Reflexive Thematic Analysis procedures to analyze data. We identified four themes of CPD: (1) Critique (participants decided to do the CPD program because of perceived gaps in their knowledge and skills), (2) Change (participants discussed several changes as a result of the CPD program), (3) Context (participants discussed the aspects of the CPD program that promoted change), and (4) Challenge (participants mentioned issues related to having completed the program). The study provides insights into the value of CPD activities for sport psychology practitioners, advances current knowledge on practitioner maturation, and illustrates how CPD fits within a practitioner's lifelong learning. Future research could investigate the professional development of mid-career sport psychology practitioners engaging in other CPD programs to confirm or extend this work

But I am a runner”:trying to be a Rogerian person-centred practitioner with an injured athlete

This reflective case study presents the experience of a trainee Sport and Exercise Psychologist during a period of applied consultancy with an injured runner. This was the trainee’s first consultancy experience attempting to practice from a Rogerian/classic person-centred perspective. As a trainee, the sport psychology delivery process followed academic and professional training models. After identifying an incongruence relating to the client’s identity as a runner, Rogers’ rejection of formulation and intervention, led to tensions. Drawing on sport and counselling psychology literature to guide reflection and approach, maintaining a relationship between client and practitioner consistent with Roger’s necessary conditions of change was the intervention. The trainee’s reflections consider being challenged by conflicts between philosophy and training requirements, their limited practice experience and responding to the client during sessions which sometimes felt inconsistent with person-centred principles. Ultimately, the client reported moving towards being a more authentic self by contextualising running as only one aspect of their life

Client-Led Applied Sport Psychology Practitioners’ Narratives About Helping Athletes

From Crossref journal articles via Jisc Publications RouterPublication status: PublishedThe current study explored how applied sport psychology practitioners adopting client-led stances described two of their athlete interactions. Applied sport psychology practitioners (8 female and 12 male, mean age = 33.76 years, SD = 4.70), describing themselves as client-led practitioners, discussed two athlete consultancies during open-ended interviews. Data analysis involved examining the narrative structure of practitioners’ stories and identifying the features of client-led service delivery present in the accounts. The participants’ stories reflected a collaborative empiricism narrative in which they collaborated with athletes to resolve client issues. The stories contained features of client-led person-centered therapy and the use of practitioner-led techniques and interventions. The results point to applied implications such as providing accounts of service delivery on which practitioners can reflect as they consider the ways they wish to help clients

Supervision: Research Questions to Move the Field Forward

Book chapter exploring critical questions in sport psychology trainee supervision

A qualitative analysis of Swedish sport psychology practitioners' experience of a continued professional development program.

Although sport psychology practitioners and researchers acknowledge the importance of continued professional development (CPD) for professional effectiveness and excellence, few studies have explored the influence of CPD activities on the practitioners' practice and thinking. This study examined qualified Swedish sport psychology practitioners' experiences of engaging in a CPD program and how it impacted their professional development. The Swedish Sports Confederation offers a CPD program that targets performance enhancement services and psychotherapy for sport psychology practitioners. We explored the influence of this CPD program on the professional development of 13 graduates (five females; age in years: M = 41.2, SD = 8.3) via semi-structured interviews. Our stance involved a realist ontology and constructionist epistemology. We followed the six-step Reflexive Thematic Analysis procedures to analyze data. We identified four themes of CPD: (1) Critique (participants decided to do the CPD program because of perceived gaps in their knowledge and skills), (2) Change (participants discussed several changes as a result of the CPD program), (3) Context (participants discussed the aspects of the CPD program that promoted change), and (4) Challenge (participants mentioned issues related to having completed the program). The study provides insights into the value of CPD activities for sport psychology practitioners, advances current knowledge on practitioner maturation, and illustrates how CPD fits within a practitioner's lifelong learning. Future research could investigate the professional development of mid-career sport psychology practitioners engaging in other CPD programs to confirm or extend this work

Geographical contrasts of Y‐chromosomal haplogroups from wild and domestic goats reveal ancient migrations and recent introgressions

By their paternal transmission, Y-chromosomal haplotypes are sensitive markers of population history and male-mediated introgression. Previous studies identified biallelic single-nucleotide variants in the SRY, ZFY and DDX3Y genes, which in domestic goats identified four major Y-chromosomal haplotypes, Y1A, Y1B, Y2A and Y2B, with a marked geographical partitioning. Here, we extracted goat Y-chromosomal variants from whole-genome sequences of 386 domestic goats (75 breeds) and seven wild goat species, which were generated by the VarGoats goat genome project. Phylogenetic analyses indicated domestic haplogroups corresponding to Y1B, Y2A and Y2B, respectively, whereas Y1A is split into Y1AA and Y1AB. All five haplogroups were detected in 26 ancient DNA samples from southeast Europe or Asia. Haplotypes from present-day bezoars are not shared with domestic goats and are attached to deep nodes of the trees and networks. Haplogroup distributions for 186 domestic breeds indicate ancient paternal population bottlenecks and expansions during migrations into northern Europe, eastern and southern Asia, and Africa south of the Sahara. In addition, sharing of haplogroups indicates male-mediated introgressions, most notably an early gene flow from Asian goats into Madagascar and the crossbreeding that in the 19th century resulted in the popular Boer and Anglo-Nubian breeds. More recent introgressions are those from European goats into the native Korean goat population and from Boer goat into Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This study illustrates the power of the Y-chromosomal variants for reconstructing the history of domestic species with a wide geographical range