A Possible-Selves Intervention for Sport Career Transition
Keywords:
Sport Career Transition, Career, Transition, InterventionAbstract
Exceptional demands of high-performance sport can limit athletes’ engagement in an array of developmental tasks such as identity exploration and the acquisition of competencies outside of the sport setting. Such tasks are needed to develop an integrated and cohesive sense of self (Lavallee & Robinson, 2007), pursuits which primarily occur in emerging adulthood. The extant literature has consistently suggested that sport career termination is one of the most significant and potentially traumatic experiences for a wide-range of competitive athletes including interuniversity sport participants (Lavallee, 2005); however, minimal sport transition interventions are in place to address its impact on athletes’ adaptation to life after sport, particularly the effects on athletes’ identities. This study utilizes a pre-test and post-test research design to study the effectiveness of a novel group psychotherapy intervention titled Identity Matters, which seeks to influence athletes’ sense of future possibilities in a variety of life domains including vocational, interpersonal, and intra-personal components, in comparison to an active control condition titled Planning Ahead, a didactic and traditional group career intervention method.
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