Research Paper about College Athletic Resilience

The purpose of this article was to inform the audience of the relationship found between flourishing, injury status, and resilience in collegiate athletes. Flourishing athletes reported better moods, more meaningful relationships, improved interaction, positive coping strategies, increased productivity, and an improved overall sense of purpose. The article explains that resilience is one of the qualities that, through improved physiological health, can influence flourishing athletes. Higher resilience is associated with positive coping strategies, improved self esteem, interconnectedness with social groups, and higher optimism, which are all factors of flourishing. The study also analyzes the effects of an overuse injury on if an athlete in flourishing or not. 

This article is an analysis of a cross study design that was a big part of a larger study. The study consisted of one thousand two hundred and thirty-nine college varsity athlete participants, ages 18 to 20.5, who were emailed optional questionnaires. The questionnaire consisted of: 1) athlete general health; 2) lifestyle and academics; 3) pain, injury and surgery and 4) well-being. Flourishing was measured by The Flourishing Scale which, through eight questions, collected results investigating the perception of the participants' sense of purpose, engagement, optimism, social relationships, self-esteem, and competence. The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) was used to measure the athlete’s resilience. It contained a series of questions scored on a scale of 1 to 5 accumulating to a score of 6 to 30 points. To determine the severity and presence of an injury due to overuse, the study relied on the Oslo Sports Traumatic Research Center for Overuse Injury Questionnaire (OSTRC) which used four questions to determine pain levels and how they affect sport participation, training volume, and performance. Each question was scored from 0 (no overuse problem) up to 25 (severe overuse problem).

The author believes that the reason the average college athlete has a high flourishing score may be because they feel a greater sense of purpose, a higher feeling of connectedness, and lower amounts of depression compared to nonathletes. The Flourishing Scale placed both male and female athletes from 8 to 56 with a median flourishing score of 50.0 (46.5-53.5). The BRS results gave a mean score of 21.6. The athletes with lower resilience scores had lower flourishing scores and the group with high resilience scores had higher flourishing scores. Overall, the author reported that flourishing was high among most of the athletes in the study, but there was a significant difference in the low resilience group and high resilience group. The author also concluded that regardless of severity and impact on playing status, the 1 in 2 athletes that reported an overuse injury did not show a significant difference in their flourishing scores compared to the scores of athletes without an overuse injury.

I think that the study was good in thought, but could have been executed better due to the fact that there could be different categories to show some of the differences between flourishing and resilience scores. The study could have focused on factors like playing status, level of college program, sex differences, sport played, and outside factors such as work and family. These things could have been explained more especially because some of the questionnaires sent out had sections that involved some of these details. A D1 football player has an extremely different schedule and lifestyle than a junior college level tennis player does. The mean of all of the scores would be more accurate if the number of athletes from each level of collegiate sports was the same. Essentially, the study could have been more focused on the categories and factors that made resilience and flourishing scores differ instead of lumping all of the participating athletes together. However, it is important to note that the author did point out the limitations and flaws in the study as well as state how a future study might be altered. The author acknowledged that the study was all through surveys online with a response rate of 26% and stated that if a future study was done, physical evaluations would be included. The author did a great job of summarizing and explaining the details of the study that they chose to focus on and it was interesting to see the different scales and things that were used to measure the information that was collected. The information given was important in regards to the necessity of helping athletes develop things like good coping skills and time management so that they can flourish. My goal is to be a physical therapist. This study can help me in my future career because it points out the relationship in flourishing athletes and whether or not they have had an overuse injury. A physical therapist is part of the process of getting injured athletes back to having a “high resilience or flourishing score.” This study is important and I am interested to see if another one is performed with some of the flaws fixed.