Sport psychology: an examination of hardiness throughout the sport injury process

Abstract

This study examined the effect of hardiness on the prediction of, and athletes’ responses to, sport injury. A two-year longitudinal design was conducted with a baseline sample of 694 asymptomatic participants (389 men, 305 women; M age = 19.17, SD = 1.69 years), 104 of whom subsequently became injured. Logistic regression, Pearson product-moment correlations, and Preacher and Hayes’s (2008) bootstrapping procedure were used to analyse the data. Findings revealed a direct and moderating effect of hardiness on the prediction of injury. Hardiness was also found to correlate positively with desirable, and negatively correlate with undesirable, post-injury psychological responses and coping strategies over time. Finally, problem-focused coping was found to mediate certain effects of hardiness on injured athletes’ psychological responses. These findings have important implications for practitioners who have a vested interest in the health and well-being of those who participate in sport in terms of minimising rates of injury occurrence and promoting recovery from injury.