The Relationship Between Coaching Behaviours and Sport Anxiety in Athletes

Previous research has identified the relationship between athlete sport anxiety and various sport outcomes (e.g., performance and dropout). For the majority of athletes involved in sport, the coach is an influential element of the competitive experience. Two hundred and twenty-eight athletes from 15 sports, completed the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Coaching Behavior Scale for Sport (CBS-S). The predictive ability of athletes' perceived frequency of seven coaching behaviours (physical training, mental preparation, goal setting, technical skills, competition strategies, personal rapport and negative personal rapport) on four forms of sport anxiety (total anxiety, somatic anxiety, concentration disruption and worry) was examined. Results indicate that negative personal rapport was a significant predictor of all measured forms of sport anxiety while competition strategies was a significant predictor for total anxiety, concentration disruption, and worry. Other behaviours were not significant. The findings suggest that negative rapport between coach and athlete is an important contributor to athlete anxiety. In addition, behaviours that the coach demonstrates relative to competition can be influential in reducing athlete anxiety.

Adversity in early adolescence alters female rats' anxiety-related behaviours and serotonergic innervation profiles in adulthood

Stress during early development produces lasting effects on psychopathological outcomes. The impact of prior intermittent, physical stress (IPS) during early-adolescence (PD 22-33) on anxiety-related behaviour of female rats was analyzed in adulthood. After behavioural testing, serotonergic innervation was evaluated using immunohistochemistry for the serotonin transporter (SERT) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and ventral hippocampus. Administration of IPS (i.e., water immersion, elevated platform, foot shock) in early adolescence increased rats’ anxiety-like behaviour in the elevated plus-maze but had no effects in the shock-probe burying test. In the social interaction test, IPS decreased social interaction, and this effect was driven by selective decreases in the duration of playfighting with no evident changes in contact or investigative behaviour. Selective stress-induced increases in SERT-immunoreactive axon density were found in the infralimbic (IL) subregion of the mPFC, but not in the cingulate or prelimbic (PL) subregions. IPS in early adolescence did not affect serotonergic innervation profiles in any sub-fields of the ventral hippocampus. The findings confirm and extend on earlier evidence that stress during early adolescence promotes the emergence of an anxious phenotype, and provide novel evidence that these effects may be mediated, at least in part, by increased serotonergic innervation of the IL mPFC.

Proving My Competency One Test at a Time: Internationally Educated Nurses and the Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses

Abstract Professional language assessment is a new concept that has great potential to benefit Internationally Educated Professionals and the communities they serve. This thesis reports on a qualitative study that examined the responses of 16 Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses (CELBAN) test-takers on the topic of their perceptions of the CELBAN test-taking experience in Ontario in the winter of 2015. An Ontario organization involved in registering participants distributed an e-mail through their listserv. Thematic analyses of focus group and interview transcripts identified 7 themes from the data. These themes were used to inform conclusions to the following questions: (1) How do IENs characterize their assessment experience? (2) How do IENs describe the testing constructs measured by the CELBAN? (3) What, if any, potential sources of construct irrelevant variance (CIV) do the test-takers describe based on their assessment experience? (4) Do IENs feel that the CELBAN tasks provide a good reflection of the types of communicative tasks required of a nurse? Overall, participants reported positive experiences with the CELBAN as an assessment of their language skills, and noted some instances in which they felt some factors external to the assessment impacted their demonstration of their knowledge and skill. Lastly, some test-takers noted the challenge of completing the CELBAN where the types of communicative nursing tasks included in the assessment differed from nursing tasks typical of an IENs country or origin. The findings are discussed in relation to literature on high-stakes large-scale assessment and IEPs, and a set of recommendations are offered to future CELBAN administration. These recommendations include (1) the provision of a webpage listing all licensure requirements (2) monitoring of CELBAN location and dates in relation to the wider certification timeline for applicants (3) The provision of additional CELBAN preparatory materials (4) Minor changes to the CELBAN administrative protocols. Given that the CELBAN is a relatively new assessment format and its widespread use for high-stakes decisions (a component of nursing certification and licensure), research validating IEN-test-taker responses to construct representation and construct irrelevant variance is critical to our understanding of the role of competency testing for IENs.