The effect of figures in CCS communication

Illustrations are an essential part of most CCS communication materials. This article looks at the role of illustrations in communication and education in general, and in CCS communication in particular. First, literature on multimedia learning is reviewed and general guidelines for designing graphical displays deduced. This is followed by a discussion of relevant mental models and their possible implementa- tion in pictorial form. The authors then report on an interview study in which illustrations with various implementations of CCS mental models are compared. No major differences were found regarding under- standing of CCS between the different illustrations. Graphical displays alone are not powerful enough to implicitly correct typical misconceptions about CCS. Such misconceptions should be stated explicitly, along with their correction.

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

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.