Barbara Bedker Meyer

• PhD
• University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Recognized as the process of psychophysiological unwinding from the demands of work and other stressors, occupational recovery has been a popular topic of study over the past decade. Building on the recovery research in occupational workers and more recently athletes, sport and performance psychology scholars have begun to consider the occupational...

Firefighting is an occupation with high injury risks, particularly when conducting fireground operations. The fire service generally quantifies the job demands of firefighting through tracking emergency call volume across 24 h shifts; however, volume alone does not account for the specific work completed in response to different call types. Utiliza...

To optimise the performance and health of elite athletes, there has been an increase in the development of athlete monitoring systems to measure if athletes perceive themselves to be adequately recovered. While these monitoring systems have been instrumental in describing athlete recovery states, little research has been conducted to establish why...

Objectives: Injury is a common and challenging experience for many athletes, and return-to-sport outcomes have been persistently poor despite advancements in research and practice. To ameliorate this challenge and to bridge a gap that exists in the sport injury literature between theoretical conceptualization and intervention design, research is n...

The purpose of the current study was to examine the reliability and validity of the RESTQ-Sport-36 for use in the collegiate student-athlete population. A total of 494 collegiate student-athletes competing in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I, II, or III sanctioned sport completed the RESTQ-Sport-36 and Brief Profile of Mood State...

Context Although researchers have directed scholars toward investigating the effectiveness of the nonwork personal time of athletic trainers (ATs), no one has characterized the occupational recovery experiences of ATs. Objective To examine the reliability and validity of the Recovery Experience Questionnaire (REQ) for use in AT populations. Desig...

The purpose of the current study was to identify psychological predictors (i.e., exercise intensity tolerance, pain catastrophizing, perceived susceptibility to sport injury, and chronic psychological stress) of perceived acute stress and recovery responses. Athletes (N = 493, Mage = 20.04 years, SD = 2.15 years) completed a battery of online psych...

Despite advancements in sport-injury rehabilitation theory and intervention design, return-to-play outcomes remain suboptimal. To explore the current knowledge base in sport-injury rehabilitation, the authors use an existing framework to review and outline gaps in the sport-injury evidence base. Through the lens of this framework they highlight the...

Assessment in Applied Sport Psychology is a comprehensive resource that will help practitioners gain a deep understanding of assessment in order to build trusting relationships and effective intervention plans that address the needs and goals of their clients.

To enhance the specificity of psychological skills training (PST) interventions, the purpose of the current study was to examine stage of change and gender differences in the combination of transtheoretical model (TTM) constructs (i.e., decisional balance pros and cons, self-efficacy, cognitive and behavioral processes of change) among collegiate s...

Purpose: To observe longitudinal changes in health and fitness among firefighter recruits. Methods: Body composition, aerobic capacity, muscular power, muscular strength, and muscular endurance measures were longitudinally collected among 27 male firefighter recruits (mean ± SD, age = 29.9 ± 4.1 yrs; height = 179.8 ± 4.6 cm; body mass = 87.2 ± 9...

The purpose of the current study was to examine the factorial validity of existing grit measures and to examine differences in the grit level of athletes across performance tiers (i.e., collegiate, professional, Olympic). Female soccer players (N = 305) of varying competitive level completed measures of grit. Results revealed preliminary support fo...

The Functional Movement Screen(TM) (FMS) is a screening tool used to evaluate functional movement quality and subsequent musculoskeletal injury risk. Despite recent research on the factorial validity of the FMS, no confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has been conducted to examine measurement invariance across sex among student-athletes. The primary...

The Perceived Susceptibility to Sport Injury (PSSI) scale is a measure that has recently surfaced in the sport injury literature. The factor structure of the PSSI scale has not been subjected to a rigorous factor analysis; thus, the factorial validity of the measure in athlete populations is unknown. To establish the validity of the PSSI scale in s...

Background: Firefighters' cardiovascular fitness remains a foremost concern among fire departments and organizations, yet very little research has been conducted to examine the cardiovascular fitness adaptations that occur during firefighter training academies. Objective: To describe the cardiovascular adaptations observed among firefighter recr...

Research has demonstrated the efficacy of psychological skills training (PST), yet many athletes do not appear ready to do whatever it takes to improve the mental aspects of performance. Although the transtheoretical model of behavior change (TTM), generally, and readiness to change, specifically, have received considerable attention in a range of...

This study examined the effects of Adventure Based Counseling (i.e., a low-element challenge program) on the cohesion of a collegiate women's volleyball team. Results suggest postintervention improvements in team cohesion. The support created in the challenge experience also transferred to the players helping one another to grieve the untimely loss...

This study investigated the factorial validity of the 33-item self-rated Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS: Schutte et al., 1998) for use with athletes. In stage 1, content validity of the EIS was assessed by a panel of experts (n = 9). Items were evaluated in terms of whether they assessed EI related to oneself and EI focused on others. Content va...

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) was developed for the purpose of creating efficient modes of qualitative data analysis (Fielding & Lee, 19987. Fielding , N. G. and Lee , R. M. 1998 . Computer analysis and qualitative research , London : Sage . View all references). Despite these developments, many social scientists con...

Recent research in the health care professions has shown that specific personal and environmental characteristics can predict burnout, which is a negative coping strategy related to stressful situations. Burnout has been shown to result in physiologic (eg, headaches, difficulty sleeping, poor appetite), psychological (eg, increased negative self-ta...

Over the past several years, sibling competition in sport has received ever-increasing attention in the popular press (Haugh, 200426. Haugh , D. 2004. Keeping up with the Joneses. The Chicago Tribune, November 24: 4–6. View all references; Lewis, 200431. Lewis , M. 2004. The Eli experiment. The New York Times Magazine, 6 December 19: 42–49. 64, 6...

Over the past five years, sport psychology researchers and practitioners have become increasingly vocal in their suggestions that emotional intelligence (EI) may be an important construct in the sport domain. Initial research in sport has been valuable for gaining preliminary insights, but use of disparate theoretical frameworks and assessment tech...

Emotional intelligence (EI), or knowledge of how emotions function in self and others, is a popular construct in both scientific and professional communities. Current theoretical models suggest that EI is a combination of dynamic skills that can be learned and enhanced through participation in targeted intervention programs. Although popular, few i...

Fibromyalgia (FM), a rheumatological disorder of unknown origin, is characterized by both physical and psychological symptoms. Although inconclusive results have been reported for most treatment modalities, exercise appears to have universal support for decreasing the myriad of symptoms associated with FM. Weaknesses in the literature, however, pre...

In answering the call for empirical documentation of the effect of ropes and challenge course participation on the psychosocial function and sport performance of athletes and teams, exploratory studies have identified postcourse changes in group cohesion and approaches to sport competition. The purpose of the current study was to utilize a pretest-...