Abstract
Injuries are an almost inevitable consequence of training and competition. The impact of an injury on an athlete's career is disappointing and sometimes demoralizing. Throughout the recovery and reconditioning process, coaches, teammates, athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches serve a different role and provide different types of support in the athlete's recovery (Heil, 1 993; Pargman, 1 993; Petitpas). PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to assess differences in the level of perceived social support reported among male and female student-athletes from their strength and conditioning coach (SC) during the later reconditioning stage of rehabilitation. METHODS: Eighty- two varsity student athletes (44 males and 38 females (mean = 20.1 7 SD = + 1 .1 84 years) from 6 Division I universities in the Midwest region of the United States completed a modified form of the Social Support Survey (Richman, Rosenfeld, & Hardy, 1993). Each participant reported being injured for a minimum of 5 consecutive days or more. The 6 types of social support assessed included: listening support, task appreciation, task challenge, emotional support, emotional challenge, and reality confirmation. The survey was first analyzed for face and content validity by a panel of sport psychologists who are familiar with the components of social support. The results of the survey demonstrated good construct validity as determined by principal component factor analysis (Chronbach's Alpha >0.750). RESULTS: As compared to male student-athletes who experienced injury, female athletes reported that it was more important to receive emotional challenge (?2 = 1 0.56, ? = 0.032), and emotional support (?2 = 1 0.38, ? = 0.034) from their strength and conditioning coach during the recovery process. Female athletes also reported higher expectation of receiving emotional support from their strength coach (?2 = 1 2.08, ? = 0.017). Overall 77.1% of respondents reported that their strength and conditioning coach had provided emotional support and 62.9% reported that their strength coach had provided emotional challenge. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest differential needs based upon expectation and importance of emotional support and challenge by gender of injured studentathletes. The findings also suggest that most student-athletes feel that they have received both forms of emotional social support from their strength and conditioning coach. Furthermore, the results of this study support similar studies which also assessed the psychological impact by the athletic trainer (AT) reported by student-athletes during rehabilitation (Barefield & McCallister, 1997). PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Strength and conditioning coaches need to be aware of the social support needs of studentathletes in one of their most vulnerable times, injury and recovery from injury. It can be suggested based upon the findings of this study that strength and conditioning professionals be aware that female student-athletes may require more emotional support during injury and recovery. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]