Analysis of sport psychology consultancy at three Olympic Games: Facts and figures

Birrer, Daniel; Wetzel, Jörg; Schmid, Jürg; Morgan, Gareth (2012). Analysis of sport psychology consultancy at three Olympic Games: Facts and figures. Psychology of sport and exercise, 13(5), pp. 702-710. Elsevier Science 10.1016/j.psychsport.2012.04.008

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Text Birrer Wetzel Schmid Morgan 2012 PSE.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Psychology of sport and exercise. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2012.04.008 Download (138kB) | Preview

Objectives
Despite many reports on best practises regarding onsite psychological services, little research has attempted to systematically explore the frequency, issues, nature and client groups of onsite sport psychology consultancy at the Olympic Games. The present paper will fill this gap through a systematic analysis of the sport psychology consultancy of the Swiss team for the Olympic Games of 2006 in Turin, 2008 in Beijing and 2010 in Vancouver.

Design
Descriptive research design.

Methods
The day reports of the official sport psychologist were analysed. Intervention issues were labelled using categories derived from previous research and divided into the following four intervention-issue dimensions: “general performance”, “specific Olympic performance”, “organisational” and “personal” issues. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, chi square statistics and odds ratios.

Results
Across the Olympic Games, between 11% and 25% of the Swiss delegation used the sport psychology services. On average, the sport psychologist provided between 2.1 and 4.6 interventions per day. Around 50% of the interventions were informal interventions. Around 30% of the clients were coaches. The most commonly addressed issues were performance related. An association was observed between previous collaboration, intervention likelihood and intervention theme.

Conclusions
Sport psychologists working at the Olympic Games are fully engaged with daily interventions and should have developed ideally long-term relationships with clients to truly help athletes with general performance issues. Critical incidents, working with coaches, brief contact interventions and team conflicts are specific features of the onsite consultancy. Practitioners should be trained to deal with these sorts of challenges.

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