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Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home advantage in neutral settings. While recent work has examined the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage in European football, comparatively few studies have examined the effect of restrictions in the North American professional sports leagues. In this work, we infer the effect of and changes in home advantage prior to and during COVID-19 in the professional North American leagues for hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football. We propose a Bayesian multi-level regression model that infers the effect of home advantage while accounting for relative team strengths. We also demonstrate that the Negative Binomial distribution is the most appropriate likelihood to use in modelling North American sports leagues as they are prone to overdispersion in their points scored. Our model gives strong evidence that home advantage was negatively impacted in the NHL and NBA during their strongly restricted COVID-19 playoffs, while the MLB and NFL showed little to no change during their weakly restricted COVID-19 seasons.

BackgroundInjury is a major stressor for athletes and one that can pose significant challenges. Student athletes must handle rigorous academic as well as athletic demands that require time as well as significant physical requirements. Trying to perform and succeed in the classroom and on the playing field has become more difficult as the demands and expectations have increased. If an athlete is injured, these stressors increase.Main thesisStress is an important antecedent to injuries and can play a role in the response to, rehabilitation and return to play after injury. The psychological response to injury can trigger and/or unmask mental health issues including depression and suicidal ideation, anxiety, disordered eating, and substance use/abuse. There are barriers to mental health treatment in athletes. They often consider seeking help as a sign of weakness, feeling that they should be able to ‘push through’ psychological obstacles as they do physical ones. Athletes may not have developed healthy coping behaviours making response to injury especially challenging.PurposeI discuss the current state of knowledge regarding the psychological response to injury and delineate resources necessary to direct the injured athlete to a mental health care provider if appropriate.

Mental energy is an important factor in many domains, including athletic performance. The athletic mental energy scale (AMES) is one of the established tools available to measure athletes’ perceived mental energy state. To date, there is no validated questionnaire to assess athletic mental energy for Chinese adolescents. Therefore, purpose of this study was to validate a Chinese version of AMES (C-AMES) among the Chinese adolescents in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China. We sampled 729 adolescents aged 14 to 18 in five middle schools in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, China to complete the revised C-AMES. Data were analyzed for factor structure validity by performing CFA. The results showed that the fit index was acceptable (RMSEA = 0.050, CFI = 0.962, TLI = 0.951), and a six-factor model containing 18 C-AMES items had good measurement properties for athletic mental energy. We suggest future study may use C-AMES to examine the relationship between athletes’ mental energy and athletic performance and sporting behavior.

Data on the psychosocial implications of sport specialization in pediatric athletes are lacking. Sport specialization often requires increased training hours and may predispose young athletes to social isolation, poor academic performance, increased anxiety, greater stress, inadequate sleep, decreased family time, and burnout. Sport specialization frequently introduces multiple stressors that could be expected to adversely affect mental health and function in young athletes and may increase the risk for burnout. This may be confounded by altered sleep duration and quality, increased drive for elite status, and perfectionistic personality types. The signs and symptoms of burnout in young athletes can be difficult to detect. It is important to be aware of the possible diagnosis of burnout in young athletes who display vague symptoms and a decrease in academic performance. The purpose of this review was to survey the available literature on sport specialization in young athletes and its association with mental health, sleep, the drive for success in sport, and burnout.

Using archival and experimental data, we showed that vicarious defeats experienced by fans when their favorite football team loses lead them to consume less healthy food. On the Mondays following a Sunday National Football League (NFL) game, saturated-fat and food-calorie intake increase significantly in cities with losing teams, decrease in cities with winning teams, and remain at their usual levels in comparable cities without an NFL team or with an NFL team that did not play. These effects are greater in cities with the most committed fans, when the opponents are more evenly matched, and when the defeats are narrow. We found similar results when measuring the actual or intended food consumption of French soccer fans who had previously been asked to write about or watch highlights from victories or defeats of soccer teams. However, these unhealthy consequences of vicarious defeats disappear when supporters spontaneously self-affirm or are given the opportunity to do so.

Despite the availability of specialized assessment tools, psychological readiness is usually not considered when deciding to return to sport (RTS) after sport injury. Reinjury anxiety, self-confidence, and functional attention may be associated with sport reinjury, making it important to evaluate these factors before RTS. To predict lower extremity reinjury in soccer players using self-confidence, functional attention, and reinjury anxiety as predictive variables. Prospective cohort study. Laboratory. Sixty-two male soccer players, who were older than 18 years of age, suffered from lower extremity injuries, had completed the rehabilitation program, and were ready to RTS. Before returning to the sport, participants completed a preseason questionnaire on their previous injuries, self-confidence, reinjury anxiety, and level of functional attention. The primary outcome measured was the risk of reinjury during the upcoming competitive season, and logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to determine the association between each risk factor and reinjury. The overall reinjury rate was 5.56 injuries per 1000 hours of play. Self-confidence scores of ≤47 increased the risk of reinjury by 2.26 times (relative risk = 2.26; 95% CI, 1.31-3.91; OR = 5.00; 95% CI, 1.56-16.04), and each unit increase in self-confidence score reduced the risk of reinjury by 10% (OR = 0.90; CI, 0.82-0.99; P = .03). Regarding reinjury anxiety, a score of >22 was associated with 2.43 times the risk of reinjury (relative risk = 2.43; 95% CI, 1.44-4.13; OR = 6.46; 95% CI, 1.93-21.69), and each unit increase in reinjury anxiety score increased the risk of injury by 45% (OR = 1.45; CI, 1.13-0.87; P = .004). Increased reinjury anxiety and decreased self-confidence are associated with higher odds of lower extremity reinjury in male soccer players. To reduce the risk of reinjury, athletic trainers and sport psychologists should take these psychological factors into account when evaluating the psychological readiness of soccer players with a history of lower extremity injury to RTS.

What is single-case research? How can single-case methods be used within sport and exercise? Single-case research is a powerful method for examining change in outcome variables such as behaviour, performance and psychological constructs, and for assessing the efficacy of interventions. It has innumerable uses within the context of sport and exercise science, such as in the development of more effective performance techniques for athletes and sportspeople and in helping us to better understand exercise behaviours in clinical populations. However, the fundamental principles and techniques of single-case research have not always been clearly understood by students and researchers working in these fields. Single-Case Research Methods in Sport and Exercise Psychology is the first book to fully explain single-case research in the context of sport and exercise. Starting with first principles, the book offers a comprehensive introduction to the single-case research process, from study design to data analysis and presentation. Including case studies and examples from across sport and exercise psychology, the book provides practical guidance for students and researchers and demonstrates the advantages and common pitfalls of single-case research for anybody working in applied or behavioural science in a sport or exercise setting.

Purpose This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to (1) determine the proportion of patients who underwent anterior shoulder instability surgery and did not return to sports for psychological reasons and (2) estimate differences in psychological readiness scores between patients who did and did not return to sports. Methods The EBSCOhost/SPORTDiscus, PubMed/Medline, Scopus, EMBASE and Cochrane Library databases were searched for relevant studies. The data synthesis included the proportion of patients who did not return to sports for psychological reasons and the mean differences in the psychological readiness of athletes who returned and those who did not return to sports. Non-binomial data were analysed using the inverse-variance approach and expressed as the mean difference with 95% confidence intervals. Results The search yielded 700 records, of which 13 (1093 patients) were included. Fourteen psychological factors were identified as potential causes for not returning to sports. The rates of return to sports at any level or to the preinjury level were 79.3% and 61.9%, respectively. A total of 55.9% of the patients cited psychological factors as the primary reason for not returning to sports. The pooled estimate showed that patients who returned to sports had a significantly higher Shoulder Instability-Return to Sport After Injury score ( P  < 0.00001) than those who did not, with a mean difference of 30.24 (95% CI 24.95–35.53; I 2  = 0%; n.s.). Conclusions Psychological factors have a substantial impact on the rate of return to sports after anterior shoulder instability surgery. Patients who returned to sports had significantly higher psychological readiness than those who did not return to sports. Based on these results, healthcare professionals should include psychological and functional measurements when assessing athletes’ readiness to return to sports. Level of evidence Level IV.

Collegiate student-athletes (SAs) experience psychological stressors due to rigid schedules, team conflict, and injury. These factors can result in symptoms of mental health conditions, decreased daily functioning, and suicidality. To explore National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I SAs' experiences with mental health and access to and experiences with mental health resources at their university. Consensual qualitative research study. One-on-one interviews. Twenty-three Division I SAs (18 women, 5 men; mean age = 20 ± 2 years). Participants completed a semistructured interview that focused on their experiences with mental health. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim via Zoom. Credibility and trustworthiness were established via member checking, triangulation, and peer discussion among a 3-person coding team. Two domains, increased expectations and resources and management, were identified. The participants shared how they balanced life as a college student, academic stressors, performance expectations, and a sport-first mindset they perceived from coaches and support staff. They discussed their experience with the internal support network of coaches, the athletic department, and sport psychology. Participants remarked on their external support network, which included their family, friends, and psychological services. The resources available at their institutions and their accessibility were perceived both positively and negatively. Some collegiate SAs described resources as helpful, whereas others portrayed a lack of timeliness for appointments, lack of advertisement, incomprehension by counselors of athlete demands, and no sport-specific counseling as barriers. Collegiate SAs expressed mental health concerns due to stress and the demands of sport participation. Self-regulated coping strategies and support networks continue to be powerful and helpful resources for mental health, with or without a diagnosed condition. Barriers to mental health service use were a lack of sport specificity and lack of access. Institutions need to focus on creating athlete-centered mental health resources with annual advertisements to increase use.

ObjectivesThis study aimed to assess participation rates of transgender and gender diverse (trans) people in sport/fitness activities, compare mental health outcomes for trans people participating in sport/fitness with those who do not and explore internal/external barriers and bullying experiences faced by trans people in sport/fitness contexts.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey open to trans people aged ≥16 years living in Australia was conducted between February and April 2023 and it assessed rates of sport/fitness participation, barriers to participation and bullying experiences through multiple-choice questions. Mental health measures comprised the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) and self-reported history of self-harm and suicidality. Covariate-adjusted binary logistic regression models tested associations between interpersonal factors, sport/fitness variables and mental health outcomes.ResultsOf 664 respondents (median age 32 years), around one-third (32.8%) regularly participated in sport/fitness. Common internal barriers to participation included anxiety about others’ reactions (63.9%), body dissatisfaction/dysphoria (56.5%) and fears about feeling accepted/affirmed by others (54.7%). Respondents commonly reported experiencing inadequate bathroom/changing facilities (44.4%), exclusionary rules and regulations surrounding gender (36.7%), and invasive or uncomfortable policies or procedures (23.3%). Over one-third (34.4%) of trans people had experienced gender-based bullying or exclusion. Regular sport/fitness participation was associated with significantly lower K10 scores (mean difference=−4.4, 95% CI−5.8, –2.9, p<0.001) and a 40% reduction in odds of recent thoughts of self-harm and suicide (aOR 0.6, 95% CI 0.5, 0.9, p=0.01; aOR 0.6, 95%CI 0.4, 0.9, p=0.02).ConclusionTrans people face significant barriers to sport/fitness despite experiencing significant mental health and personal benefits from participation. Affirming and including trans people in sport and fitness should be a key priority for sport and fitness federations, organisations and policy-makers.