Achim Conzelmann

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• Professor Emeritus at University of Bern

The reasons for the end of a career in elite sport have long been a major topic in sport psychology. Although the literature repeatedly emphasises that retirement decisions are multi-causal and individual-specific, quantitative studies have hardly taken this into account methodologically. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify and validat...

People’s subjective sense of meaning in life is a flourishing research topic in psychology but remains underexplored in sport psychology. This study uses a person-oriented method to shed light on meaning in the lives of elite athletes (i.e., latent profile analysis) to identify distinct profiles of sources of meaning in life, and compare the extent...

Objectives: This study examines the training (age at club entry, hours in club practice, free play, other sports) and environmental characteristics (popularity, media coverage, school and parental support) influencing the development of female Swiss national team players in elite football over a three-decade period. Methods: A retrospective questi...

The present study surveyed 57 retired female soccer national team players to examine their athletic, educational, and vocational careers. The respondents achieved higher educational degrees compared to the general population. Contrasted with their siblings, no difference was found in school-leaving certificates and occupational prestige. Using clus...

Wie die optimale Passung zwischen Person und Sportaktivität in der Praxis gelingen kann Obwohl die positiven Gesundheitswirkungen von körperlicher Aktivität allgemein bekannt sind, tun sich viele Menschen schwer, mit Sporttreiben zu beginnen und dabei zu bleiben. Möchte man das regelmäßige Sporttreiben fördern, ist zu beachten, dass sowohl wir Mens...

Table S2 Posterior Probabilities for the 4-Profile Solution at T1 and T2

Table S1 Psychosocial Resource Latent Profiles: Models for 2- to 6-Profile-Solutions

A central, yet still unresolved, question about optimal youth talent development asks whether children should specialize and train systematically in one sport—early specialization—or gain different playful experiences in several sports—early sampling. Based upon theoretical considerations, we problematize dichotomous discussions and offer a complex...

Previous research has demonstrated that psychosocial resources are associated with elite athletes’ perceived stress. However, these resources have mainly been studied separately. Using a person-oriented approach, this study aimed to identify meaningful profiles of athletes’ psychosocial resources, their stability over time, and their relationship w...

The purpose of this study was to examine how athletic identity develops beyond a career in elite sport and which factors contribute to this development. A two-wave 12-year longitudinal survey of 290 Swiss elite athletes (Mage = 36.8 years at t2; 32.8% women, 67.2% men; 63% individual sports, 37% team sports athletes) was conducted during (t1) and a...

This paper situates talent identification research in sport science within the broader context of developmental science, offering a conceptual framework informed by two (meta-)theoretical worldviews: the Cartesian-split-mechanistic and processual-relational worldviews. Although these worldviews are not explicitly named in the field of talent identi...

Retirement from elite sport represents a major life transition for athletes and requires them to redefine their central life projects, identities, and perhaps even sources of meaning in life. Although an extensive body of literature has identified risk and protective factors in career termination, little is known about the more subjective processes...

The aim of this study was to examine patterns of sports-related and socioeconomic resources at the time of athletic retirement and their relation to the subsequent vocational career. We surveyed 341 former Olympic athletes representing Switzerland about their athletic, educational, and vocational careers. In order to adequately depict the heterogen...

Research concerning athletic career development in high-performance sport typically uses demographic data, sport characteristics or pursuing a dual career (i.e. having an educational or vocational career simultaneous to the athletic career) to identify developmental processes. In defiance of these attempts, considerable heterogeneity remains within...

This study examined the complex associations between athletic retirement and self-esteem among former elite athletes. With reference to theoretical and empirical work on the quality of the transition out of sport, information was collected from 290 (junior) elite athletes in a retrospective-prospective design: at the first measurement, active athle...

Despite a growing interest in conducive talent development environments (TDE), the relationship between TDEs and the performance level in adulthood remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the relationship of the micro-environment of former Swiss junior national team ice hockey players with their performance level in adulthood. With quantita...

The postulate in sport pedagogy that sport promotes personality development in a positive sense has a long tradition in physical education and in sport science theory. However, sport psychology research is struggling to provide empirical evidence for this postulate. The reasons for the unsatisfactory research situation are, on the one hand, due to...

Introduction Elite athletes spend a great amount of time training and competing. Accordingly, their live is focused on and shaped by sport. As a result, many athletes develop a strong athletic identity, which may be defined as the extent to which athletes identify with their role as athletes (Brewer, 1993). While risk and opportunities associated...

Welche Wahrnehmungsprozesse laufen in einem Sportspiel wie ab? Wie und wann fällt z. B. die Entscheidung für Passen oder Torschuss? Wie entsteht Angst im Turnunterricht, und wie lässt sie sich abbauen? Wie kann man erreichen, dass sich Menschen einen bewegungsaktiveren Lebensstil aneignen? Fördert Schulsport die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung von Kinde...

When identifying talent, the confounding influence of maturity status on motor performances is an acknowledged problem. To solve this problem, correction mechanisms have been proposed to transform maturity-biased test scores into maturity-unbiased ones. Whether or not such corrections also improve predictive validity remains unclear. To address thi...

When identifying talent, the confounding influence of maturity status on motor performances is an acknowledged problem. To solve this problem, correction mechanisms have been proposed to transform maturity-biased test scores into maturity-unbiased ones. Whether or not such corrections also improve predictive validity remains unclear. To address thi...

Objectives (1) To assess the period prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections and willingness to vaccinate in Swiss elite athletes and (2) to evaluate whether sociodemographic and sport-related characteristics were associated with infection of SARS-CoV-2 in athletes. Methods A total of 1037 elite athletes (M age =27.09) were surveyed in this cross-secti...

The importance of achievement motivation for the development of athletic performance has been widely acknowledged. However, evidence on the relation of motivational characteristics from adolescence to elite performance level is still rare. The aim of the present study was to examine whether motivational patterns of U14 football players were associa...

This study tested the effectiveness of individual exercise and sport counseling in a nonclinical setting. The CO unseling based on M otives and goals in E xercise and spor T (COMET) approach focuses on individual motives and goals and aims to identify suitable activities. Participants experience different exercise and sport activities and reflect o...

Background The present study firstly aimed to identify context patterns in sport and exercise among adolescents at lower and upper secondary education. The organisational, social and competitive contexts of leisure-time sport and exercise were included as pattern indicators. The second aim was to examine the stability of these patterns across educa...

For many high-performance athletes, competing in the Olympic Games is a major goal. Achieving this goal requires more than ever substantial investments of time and personal resources towards the sports career over several years. Thus, some athletes neglect other areas of life (e.g. education), which can pose a problem for the time after high-perfor...

In sport and exercise promotion, it is important to consider goals because achieving these goals leads to a sense of well-being and behaviour adherence. Individuals often pursue multiple goals simultaneously. Therefore, it is also important to not only consider each individual's combination of goals but also to identify so-called "goal profiles". T...

There is continuing discussion in talent research on the best approach to developing sporting expertise through learning activities during early sport participation. Among other concepts, the specialized sampling model describes a pathway between early specialization and early sampling and yields promising results in Swiss football. As successful c...

Talent selection in rowing is often solely based on anthropometric and performance variables, even though psychological characteristics are considered to be important contributors to successful talent development. Because multidimensional talent models and holistic theories represent the state-of-the-art in talent research, we aimed to find pattern...

Zusammenfassung Motivationale Aspekte, wie Motive und Ziele, sind für die Aufnahme und die Aufrechterhaltung sportlicher Aktivitäten von zentraler Bedeutung. Motive und Ziele verändern sich im Laufe des Lebens. Daher beschäftigt sich der Beitrag mit der Frage, welche Motive und Ziele in Abhängigkeit vom Lebensalter wichtig sind. Untersucht werden d...

Zusammenfassung Ein Ziel der Sport- und Bewegungsförderung ist, eine möglichst gute Passung zwischen der Person und dem Sport herzustellen. Dabei sind insbesondere die sportbezogenen Motive und Ziele von Menschen in den Blick zu nehmen. Denn werden diese befriedigt, so fördert dies das Wohlbefinden und die Bindung an die Aktivität. Folgende Motive...

It is widely recognized that motivation is an important determinant for a successful sports career. Specific patterns of motivational constructs have recently demonstrated promising associations with future success in team sports like football and ice hockey. The present study scrutinizes whether those patterns also exist in individual sports and w...

Affective well-being is positively linked to regular exercise. Therefore, it is important to identify the factors that influence intra-individual variability of affective well-being. This study investigated (1) whether affective responses vary within an individual and (2) how affective responses are associated with a motive-incentive fit and a skil...

The current study presents the development and validation of a questionnaire on motivational competence in exercise and sport. Motivational competence characterises the self-determined ability to choose a suitable exercise and sport activity. Knowing one’s own preferences and what to expect in different activities helps people to make this choice,...

Counseling is seen as a promising method for promoting exercise behavior. The aims of this study were (1) to describe the design of a novel counseling approach based on motives and goals in exercise and sport (COMET). The COMET approach considers individual preferences, while focusing on identifying suitable types of activities. Furthermore, (2) im...

Background: In order to generate more effective interventions to promote exercise and sport in adolescence, a better understanding of the interaction of influencing factors across different levels is needed. In particular, motivation and volition for exercise and sport, as well as the context in which adolescents are doing exercise and sport, have...

Background: Schoolchildren’s personality development is considered a central goal of physical education (PE). With regard to the relationship between psychological well-being and global self-esteem over the life course, the promotion of positive self-esteem is an issue of particular significance. Past research revealed that PE taught with an indivi...

Die Frage der (positiven) Wirkungen sportlicher Aktivitäten auf die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung ist seit Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts ein zentrales Forschungsthema innerhalb der Sportpsychologie. Trotz einer Vielzahl von Studien konnte allerdings lange Zeit keine eindeutige Wirkung sportlicher Aktivitäten auf die Persönlichkeit nachgewiesen werden. Di...

The coach-rating scale for Achievement-Motivated Behavior in Individual Sports (AMBIS-I) was constructed to measure achievement motivation, not from athletes' own views but from coaches' perspectives. The tool was already checked for reliability as well as content, factorial, and concurrent criterion validity (Zuber and Conzelmann, 2019). To furthe...

Recommended multidimensional models for talent selection are difficult to implement for practitioners in the field. Furthermore, their application has not been established from a scientific point of view, with a lack of clarity concerning how to integrate manifold test results with respect to loading, interaction, and compensation phenomena. Conseq...

Ein variables Sammeln von Erfahrungen (z.B. Freies Spielen, Clubtraining, Ausüben ähnlicher Sportarten, polysportive Aktivität) innerhalb einer Sportart im Kindesalter scheint hinsichtlich einer erfolgreichen Karriere besonders wichtig.

One important issue in exercise psychology is to determine the mechanisms behind the relationship between exercise and self-esteem. This study tested the assumption that the effect of perceived sports competence on early adolescent’s global self-esteem depends on individual and gender-specific importance ratings. A total of 257 adolescents particip...

In football it was recently demonstrated, that patterns of motivational constructs in young talented football players are relatively stable in early adolescence, and are associated with specific performance related outcomes (Zuber et al., 2015). The aim of the present study was to check whether the motivational patterns found in youth elite footbal...

Background: The first aim of the present study was to identify psychosocial patterns among adolescents at lower secondary school. Employing the motivation and volition process model and a socioecological framework, self-concordance, action planning, social support, and club-related exercise and sport activities were included as indicators. The sec...

Talent identification in rowing is often solely based on anthropometric factors and performance variables (e.g. Bourgois et al., 2010), even though psychological characteristics are considered to be important contributors to successful talent development (e.g. MacNamara et al., 2010). Since multidimensional talent models represent the state-of-the-...

The assessment of achievement motivation in the context of selection decisions in elite youth sports is associated with serious problems (e.g. socially desirable responses). In order to counteract such problems, an external rating scale for the assessment of the Achievement-Motivated Behavior in Individual Sports (AMBIS-I) from a coach’s perspectiv...

Classroom-based physical activity (PA) is gaining attention in terms of its potential to enhance children’s cognitive functions, but it remains unclear as to which specific modality of PA affects cognitive functions most. The aim of the study was to examine the effects of qualitatively different PA breaks on children’s cognitive outcomes. Children...

Dataset underlying the findings of the current study. (SAV)

Due to the tremendous popularity of youth football, practitioners in this domain face the ongoing question of the most effective solutions in early talent selection. Although the scientific community has suggested multidimensional models for some time, coach assessments and motor performance tests remain common. Earlier research has determined the...

Exercise- and sport-related motives and goals are important motivational factors in promoting exercise and sport among adolescents and young adults. However, at present, there is no well-validated instrument to assess these factors that considers age-specific characteristics. Therefore, the goals of this study were to adapt the existing Bernese Mot...

Table 1. Comparison of existing sport and exercise motive and goal questionnaires

Data Analysis and Results of Comparison of Non-Nested Models

Table 1. Standardized factor loadings of the initial factor validity and distribution characteristics

Background Given the strong relationship between executive functions and academic achievement, there has been great interest in improving executive functions. School‐based group interventions targeting executive functions revealed encouraging results in preschoolers and young school children; however, there is a paucity of studies in older primary...

Objectives: Acute bouts of physical activity may have an impact on children's executive functions. However, the role played by cognitive engagement (CE) during physical activity remains unclear. Therefore, the aim of the study was to disentangle the separate and/or combined effects of physical exertion (PE) and CE, induced by classroom-based physic...

Target group-specific intervention strategies are often called for in order to effectively promote exercise and sport. Currently, motives and goals are rarely included systematically in the design of interventions, despite the key role they play in well-being and adherence to exercise. The Bernese motive and goal inventory (BMZI) allows an individu...

German and English version of the original and updated BMZI. (DOCX)

Descriptive statistics of the items of the original and updated BMZI. Items with # were part of the updated version of the BMZI; items with * were newly phrased for the updated version of the BMZI. (DOCX)

Characteristics of learning activities in early sport participation play a key role in the development of the sporting talent. Therefore, pathways of specialisation or diversification/sampling are as well debated as the implementation of practice- or play-oriented activities. The related issues are currently perceived as a two-dimensional construct...

Das Ziel des Erreichens von Spitzenleistungen hat im Sport eine lange Tradition und auch in der heutigen Zeit nichts von seiner Anziehungskraft verloren. Internationale sportliche Erfolge in möglichst vielen Sportarten sind in unserer Gesellschaft (implizit oder explizit) erwünscht und stoßen medial auf hohes Interesse. Der Spitzensport hat sich in...

Background: Cancer survival comes at a price: pediatric cancer survivors bear a high risk for a wide range of cognitive difficulties. Therefore, interventions targeting these difficulties are required. The aim of the present clinical trial is to extend empirical evidence about efficacy of cognitive and physical training in pediatric cancer survivo...

Although talent selection in professional soccer mainly relies on the subjective judgment of scouts and coaches, little is known to date about top-level soccer coaches’ conceptions of talent. Drawing on a constructivist approach, this mixed method study intends to give an in-depth insight into coaches’ subjective talent criteria and to investigate...

Even though positive relations between children’s motor ability and their academic achievement are frequently reported, the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. Executive function has indeed been proposed, but hardly tested as a potential mediator. The aim of the present study was therefore to examine the mediating role of executive function in...

Dataset underlying the findings of the current study. (SAV)

Introduction Optimizing the learning environment for young players is crucial within talent development in football. According to this, there is an extensive debate on the specificity of practice in the context of early sport participation up to 12 years of age. Is it beneficial to specialize in one sport-specific domain or does sampling through se...

Motor tests play a key role in talent selection in football. However, individual motor tests only focus on specific areas of a player's complex performance. To evaluate his or her overall performance during a game, the current study takes a holistic perspective and uses a person-oriented approach. In this approach, several factors are viewed togeth...

SPSS File containing row data. SPSS data file containing row data of all measuring points. (SAV)

Multidimensional and dynamic talent models represent the current state of the art, but these demands have hardly ever been implemented so far. One reason for this could be the methodological problems associated with these requirements. This paper will present a proposal for dealing with this, namely for examining the development of young soccer pla...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between exercise experiences (perceptions of competence, perceived exertion, acute affective responses to exercise) and affective attitudes toward exercise. This relationship was analyzed in a non-laboratory setting during a 13-weeks exercise program. Materials and Methods: 56 wo...

Although talent selection decisions in professional soccer are based on coaches' subjective judgements, little is known to date about their subjective talent criteria. Drawing on a constructivist approach (Kelly, 1991), we studied six Swiss top-level youth soccer coaches using a semistructured interview and repertory grid technique (Fromm, 2004). T...

In addition to the positive effects on physical and motor development, physical education is also assumed to-have a positive influence on psychological factors in children. The present quasi-experimental study examined the effects of a 14-week intervention to promote children's social self-concept. In all, 307 pupils (M-age = 10.92, SD = 0.64) part...

Although the positive effects of different kinds of physical activity (PA) on cognitive functioning have already been demonstrated in a variety of studies, the role of cognitive engagement in promoting children's executive functions is still unclear. The aim of the current study was therefore to investigate the effects of two qualitatively differen...