Amber M. Shipherd

Texas A&M University - Kingsville · Department of Health and Kinesiology

Self-efficacy plays a vital role in an athlete’s injury and rehabilitation experience and is linked to successful rehabilitation outcomes. We sought to develop a deeper understanding of self-efficacy sources throughout injury rehabilitation using an interpretative phenomenological analysis design grounded in a pragmatist paradigm. Semistructured in...

One's beliefs about the nature of stress (e.g., stress mindset) play a large role in the extent to which one experiences the detrimental or beneficial outcomes of stress. Stress mindset has been explored in college students, but there is limited research on stress mindsets in student-athletes. Sport can serve as a buffer to the negative impacts of...

In line with trends in sport management education that have encouraged a transition from traditional forms of passive and depersonalized learning to active and motivated learning, this essay draws on theoretical and applied insight to provide sport management educators with actionable information related to gamification. In educational contexts, ga...

While there are studies that qualitatively examine athletes’ retirement experiences post retirement [e.g. Lavallee & Robinson, 2007. In pursuit of an identity: A qualitative exploration of retirement from women's artistic gymnastics. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 8(1), 119–141; Torregrosa et al., 2015. Olympic athletes back to retirement: A qua...

Grit has been previously presented as a personality trait that reflects an individual’s perseverance of effort and consistency of interest for achieving their long-term goals. In resistance training this could mean that a “grittier” individual may perform more repetitions at a given intensity as they are better able to overcome metabolic and neurom...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce sport psychology faculty to a nontraditional learning activity or assessment, the “epic finale.” An epic finale is a final, memorable learning experience that motivates students to continue thinking about material after the class is concluded and leaves students with a positive experience of the course and...

The first purpose of this article is to provide an overview of athlete leadership in modern sport programs. This includes a brief outline of the theoretical perspectives on sport leadership and a discussion of the recent research on who athlete leaders typically are in terms of their demographics, behaviors displayed, and benefits to the team. High...

Statistics indicate that the overwhelming majority of NCAA Division I college athletes will not continue in their sport professionally (NCAA, 2019). Therefore, there is a need to develop a deeper understanding of the variables that influence college athletes’ psychological health and well-being as they transition to retirement. The present study ga...

Physical activity has long been established as an essential behavior for vital physical and psychosocial health outcomes (16, 18), but lack of physical activity is still a rampant problem worldwide (7). Numerous factors influence physical activity participation, including affect, a measure of well-being. Research has found that affect increases fol...

Haischer, MH, Cooke, DM, Carzoli, JP, Johnson, TK, Shipherd, AM, Zoeller, RF, Whitehurst, M, and Zourdos, MC. Impact of cognitive measures and sleep on acute squat strength performance and perceptual responses among well-trained men and women. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2019-This study assessed the efficacy of currently used assessments fo...

Studies have found self‐efficacy to be a key predictor of performance across domains (e.g., Feltz & Magyar, 2006; Judge & Bono, 2001). However, few studies have examined how self‐efficacy and the sources of self‐efficacy information change over time, and most of these studies utilized tasks participants were familiar or experienced with. Therefore,...

Sport psychology practitioners frequently utilize questionnaires to evaluate sport psychology services, yet questionnaires may not be valued as highly by the coaches and/or athletes themselves. Therefore, an alternative, more reliable, and ecologically valid method of assessing mental skills is needed for sport psychology practitioners. As such, th...

Coach turnover is frequent, especially in collegiate sports in the United States. To date, however, there is limited research on how coach turnover might affect student-athletes. Accordingly, we aimed to qualitatively explore how coach turnover might influence student-athletes’ psychosocial states and team dynamics in collegiate sports. Eleven athl...

A common problem college educators face is keeping this generation of students engaged in the classroom. Research supports that gamification, or using game like mechanics, can improve student engagement and facilitate intrinsic motivation, while also encouraging students to think critically, connect ideas, reflect, and become better self-directed l...

Superstitions, or repetitive actions an athlete believes to be powerful and influential to performance and success, are prevalent in all types of sport. Superstitions are often believed to be detrimental due to their controlling nature, as opposed to pre-performance routines, in which the athlete is in control. However, superstitions may serve to r...

Many scholars believe that due to the intensity of college sport, student-athletes are denied a well-rounded experience. Although previous research has focused on the educational experiences of the general student-athlete population, few studies have focused on the culture that constructs the overall student-athlete experience. The authors utilized...

A social networking Web site, Facebook, was used to deliver long-term sport psychology consultation services to student-athletes (i.e., soccer players) in 30- to 60-min weekly sessions. Additional short-term team building, group cohesion, communication, anger management, injury rehabilitation, mental toughness, commitment, and leadership workshops...

The purpose of this study was to examine parent perspectives of their adolescents’ injury rehabilitation and return to competition experiences. Ten Australian parents (seven females, three males) were interviewed over an eleven-month period. Six key themes emerged from parent interviews including: injury rehabilitation and return to competition str...

The purpose of this study was to examine parent perspectives of their adolescents’ injury rehabilitation and return to competition experiences. Ten Australian parents (seven females, three males) were interviewed over an 11-month period. Six key themes emerged from parent interviews: injury rehabilitation and return to competition stressors, coping...

Iconic media moments include when Kerri Strug 1996 Olympic vault with two torn ligaments in her ankle, and Tiger Woods’ win in the 2008 US Open with a torn left anterior cruciate ligament and a double stress fracture on his left tibia. Both athletes were regarded as heroes for competing while injured and particularly because they were successful in...