Aurelio Olmedilla

Multilevel Psychological Analysis for Cooperative Work Teams

In this study, we try to discover the natural psychological dynamics in a cooperative work team. We have selected a group of individuals that can help us to explore the psychological processes when working in a team. A new tool is used which has been developed from the most relevant conceptual frameworks existing at the moment, the Cooperative Workteams Questionnaire, (CWQ). In this paper, we present the psychometric characteristics and impact encountered by the conceptual framework. We also present an analysis of the results obtained from applying this framework.

A Bayesian Approach to Sport Injuries Likelihood: Does Player’s Self-Efficacy and Environmental Factors Plays the Main Role?

The psychological factors of sports injuries constitute a growing field of study, even from the point of view of the prediction of their occurrence. Most of them, however, do not take into account the likelihood of the injuries’ occurrence and the weight and role of the psychological variables on it. We conducted a study building up a Bayesian Network on a big sample of athletes, trying to assess these probabilistic links among several relevant psychological variables and the injuries’ occurrence. The sample was constituted by 297 athletes (239 males, 58 females) from a wide range of sports: track and field; judo; fencing; karate; boxing; swimming; kayaking; artistic rollerskating, and team sports as football, basketball, and handball (Mean age: 25.10 ±-3.87; range: 21–38 years). Several psychological variables, such as anxiety, social support, and self-efficacy were studied. Also, we recorded the history of injuries as well the body mass index and personal epidemiological data. The overall picture of the generated graph and Bayesian Network and its analysis – including the use of hypothetical data by means of several instantiations – includes the nuclear role of the Self-Efficacy regarding the injuries’ occurrence likelihood; the decreasing impact of the competitive anxiety previous to the injury; the probabilistic independence of the players’ risk behaviors, and the relevance of the environmental clues such the use of coping strategies and social support in order to build up a good level of Self-Efficacy after the occurrence of an injury. All these data are relevant when designing both preventive and recovery interventions from the multidisciplinary as well as from the psychological point of view.

Psychological Profiling of Triathlon and Road Cycling Athletes

Psychological characteristics of athletes play a key role in sport performance and may moderate and mediate the influence of technical, tactical, and physical abilities athletes show. Different authors have emphasized the special attention such psychological characteristics should receive considering the extent they can influence athletes’ behavior either in training or in competition. This paper is aimed at describing the psychological profiles of two cycling sports: triathlon and road cycling. One hundred and twenty-nine male and female professional and amateur cycling athletes (35.74 years old average age ±12.79; 14.94 average number of years practicing cycling ±11.20) were assessed on different psychological characteristics. For that purpose, the Psychological Characteristics related to the Sport Performance (CPRD) Questionnaire and the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports (PSIS) was used. Results showed significant differences among triathlon and road cyclists (Stress control = t116 =-3.711, p = 0.000, d = 0.48 ; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t115 =-3-115, p = 0.002, d = 0.49; Motivation = t124 =-5.520, p = 0.000, d = 0.82; Mental Skills = t119 =-4.985, p = 0.000, d = 1.02). There were no significant differences between men and women though there were differences among pros and amateur athletes. Triathlon professional, compared to amateurs, showed higher scores in all the psychological dimensions assessed (Stress control = t85 = 3.005, p = 0.003, d = 1.07; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t83 = 2.858, p = 0.005, 0.77; Motivation = t91 = 2.721, p = 0.008, d = 0.26; Mental Skills = t87 = 2.556, p = 0.012, d = 0.77). The results of this descriptive study contribute to establishing a model of optimal psychological profiling applied to the different cycling groups that can be used by sport psychologist, trainers, and coaches in order to promote peak performance of these athletes.

Team Cooperation and Its Factors: A Confirmatory Analysis

Recently knowledge has been obtained about the Cooperative meta-dynamics in performance teams, and also on the fit between the manager’s and team member’s beliefs about teamwork and performance. To obtain this, a specific instrument has been created and validated, the Questionnaire on Cooperation in Performance Teams (CWQ). The need for such this kind of tool is double fold: first, to combine the most relevant conceptual theories in a short and friendly usable instrument, and to obtain easily applicable knowledge addressed to managers and coaches working with performance teams. In order to accomplish fully with this aim, a confirmatory analysis of the new instrument is required too. Consequently, the CWQ was administered to 218 players of performance sports teams (Mean age = 21.12; SD = 6.72; mean years of experience = 11.42; SD = 6.33). The data analysis consisted on the study of the main components (forcing and without forcing the number of factors), with a Varimax rotation. The results confirm the validation of the CWQ both for the “A” and “B” versions of the questionnaire and the existence of four meta-factors: 1. Global cooperation with the team; 2. Cooperation for personal growth in the team; 3. Emotional cooperation, and 4. Conditional cooperation. The four factors shown factorial weights similar to those obtained in the previous exploratory study. These data confirms its transcultural and transituational invariance of the CWQ, as along with its conceptual validity and the solid theoretical conception of the abovementioned factors, and also its applicability in various performance environments. In addition, a mathematical analysis has been introduced to evaluate the symmetry between cooperative work beliefs from both coach and player views, embedded in the conceptual framework of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory.