Exploring the role of self-compassion in women athletes' emotionally painful experiences of injury in sport
| dc.contributor.advisor | Kowalski, Kent C. | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Ferguson, Leah J. | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Erlandson, Marta C. | en_US |
| dc.contributor.committeeMember | Dorsch, Kim D. | en_US |
| dc.creator | Spencer, Nicole | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2015-10-07T12:00:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2015-10-07T12:00:15Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2015-08 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2015-10-06 | en_US |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2015 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Injury is a common and emotionally painful aspect of sport participation for female athletes. Playing through injury is normalized in sport culture; unfortunately, this practice holds short- and long-term health risks. Self-compassion has been endorsed as a resource for female athletes coping with injury and is purported to result in better health-related choices. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of self-compassion in competitive women athletes’ self-care behaviours following emotionally painful experiences of injury. Participants were 159 female athletes ranging in age from 18-49 years who completed an online survey. Five measures of emotional pain were used: negative affect, threat appraisal, badness rating, emotional difficulty, and a composite score comprised of the previous four measures. Self-compassion was negatively related to negative affect (r = -.26, p < .01), threat appraisal (r = -.19, p < .05), and the emotional pain composite score (r = -.18, p < .05) but not to badness rating or emotional difficulty rating. Self-compassion did not contribute unique variance, beyond self-esteem and athletic identity, in the emotional pain measures. The emotional pain composite score was negatively related to self-compassionate reactions (r = -.23, p < .01), positive reactions (r = -.30, p < .01), and perseverant reactions (r = -.16, p < .05) and positively related to ruminative reactions (r = .54, p < .01), passive reactions (r = .24, p < .01), and self-critical reactions (r = .48, p < .01). Unexpectedly, emotional pain was positively correlated with stopping training (r = .34, p < .01), reduced training frequency (r = .33, p < .01), reduced training intensity (r = .27, p < .01), and reduced training duration (r = .33, p < .01) and not significantly related to responsible reactions or stopping the session in which the injury was incurred. Neither self-compassion nor fear of self-compassion moderated the relationship between emotional pain and self-care behaviours. Participants also completed an open-ended question in which they described in detail everything they did to care for their injuries. A codebook was developed and used to analyze the responses. Self-care behaviours fell into the following categories: diagnostics, rest, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, treatment, and training accommodations. Athletes reported using an average of 3.38 self-care behaviours - most commonly describing obtaining a medical diagnosis and undergoing treatment. Self-compassion was not related to the number of self-care behaviours used by participants or the use of any individual behaviour. Overall, the results suggest that self-compassion plays a role in women athletes’ injury experiences; however, likely due to the complex and multifaceted nature of injury, the relationships might not manifest in perfect concordance with theoretical conceptualizations. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10388/ETD-2015-08-2156 | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | eng | en_US |
| dc.subject | women athletes | en_US |
| dc.subject | self-compassion | en_US |
| dc.subject | athletic identity | en_US |
| dc.subject | injury | en_US |
| dc.subject | self-care | en_US |
| dc.title | Exploring the role of self-compassion in women athletes' emotionally painful experiences of injury in sport | en_US |
| dc.type.genre | Thesis | en_US |
| dc.type.material | text | en_US |
| thesis.degree.department | Kinesiology | en_US |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Kinesiology | en_US |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Saskatchewan | en_US |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | en_US |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Science (M.Sc.) | en_US |