Examination of a Screening Tool for Athletes’ Mental Health and its Direct Implications to Sport Training and Competition

The Sport Interference Checklist (SIC) is a psychometrically validated instrument designed to assess how often cognitive and behavioral factors interfere with athletes performance during training and/or competition as well as the extent to which athletes are interested in pursuing sport psychology to address these problems. The success of this scale inspired an interest in developing new items that assess the influence of specific mental health concerns on sport performance using the SIC format. The Sport Interference Checklist’s Sport Specific Screen for Mental Health (SIC-SSSMH) was empirically developed using 259 athletes to assist in the identification of mental health problems explicitly reported to influence sport performance in both training (SIC-SSSMH-T) and competitive settings (SIC-SSSMH-C). An additional scale was developed to determine athletes’ desire to pursue services from a sport psychologist for endorsed sport-specific mental health factors (SIC-SSSMH-DSP). Factor analyses of SIC-SSSMH-T and SIC-SSSMH-C items reveal one factor for each scale, accounting for 38% of the total variance on the Training scale and 36% of the total variance on the Competition scale. SIC-SSSMH-DSP items also yielded one factor accounting for 54% of total variance. Factor scores for each of these scales exhibit acceptable internal consistency. In addition, these scales demonstrate high convergent validity when compared to the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised (SCL-90-R), a well-established screen for general mental health factors. Recommendations for future screening sport-specific mental health factors are discussed in light of the results

Realizing Art in Multiple Media: How Different Art Forms Capitalize on Varying Elements of Artistic Communication

Art involves a very large and diverse collection of practices which humanity utilizes to express and communicate. Though these forms are highly similar in many ways, each holds a unique strength in relation to the others. This project was organized in an attempt to illustrate how several particular art forms excel in communicating in very diverse ways

The JOBS Act: Encouraging Capital Formation But Not IPOs

This note will analyze several of the key provisions of the JOBS Act and their effect on raising capital for small growth companies. The scope of this note will exclude the Title III crowdfunding provisions, as there is already substantial discussion about the topic in the legal and business communities. Part II discusses the IPO registration process. Part III explores the JOBS Act and its effect on securities regulation. Specifically, this note will cover the Title I IPO on-ramp, the Title II changes to Regulation D, the Title IV changes to Regulation A and 144A, and finally the Title V and VI changes to shareholder limits. Part IV analyzes the impact the JOBS Act will have on raising capital for small growth enterprises. Part V will conclude