Richard J. Keegan

University of Canberra · Department of Sport Studies

Background Smartphone apps are increasingly used to deliver physical activity and sedentary behaviour interventions for people with cardiovascular disease. However, the active components of these interventions which aim to change behaviours are unclear. Aims To identify behaviour change techniques used in smartphone app interventions for improving...

Objectives Primary: To gain a system-wide perspective on factors leading to athlete attrition from a high-performance sport system (HPSS). Secondary: To identify what a sample of system-wide stakeholders and past athletes value as the most important and feasible attrition factors to address to retain talented athletes. Design Mixed-methods. Metho...

Military personnel often perform complex cognitive operations under unique conditions of intense stress. This requirement to perform diverse physical and mental tasks under stress, often with high stakes, has led to recognition of the term ‘tactical athlete’ for these performers. Impaired cognitive performance as a result of this stress may have se...

Objective To quantify the impact of performing challenging cognitive, physical and psychological tasks on subsequent cognitive performance, and whether differences in performance are predicted by psychological variables. Background Successful performance in many occupations depends on resilient cognition: the degree to which cognitive functions ca...

Personnel in many professions must remain “ready” to perform diverse activities. Managing individual and collective capability is a common concern for leadership and decision makers. Typical existing approaches for monitoring readiness involve keeping detailed records of training, health and equipment maintenance, or – less commonly – data from wea...

Background: Smartphone applications provide new opportunities for secondary prevention healthcare. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine if smartphone applications are effective at changing physical activity and sedentary behaviour in people with cardiovascular disease. Methods: Six electronic databases (Medline, CINAHL Plu...

This study retrospectively explored perceptions of coach, parent and peer motivational influences across athlete development. Four investment stage football players (M age = 18.5 years, SD = 0.6) with an average of 13 (SD = 1.4) years footballing experience, and four of their parents, were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of coach, pare...

To complement and enhance readiness-monitoring capability, the Acute Readiness Monitoring Scale (ARMS) was developed: a widely applicable, simple psychometric measure of perceived readiness. While this tool may have widespread utility in sport and military settings, it remains unknown if the ARMS demonstrates predictive and concurrent validity. Her...

Recent research in exercise prescription and periodization has emphasized the importance of subjective experience, both in medium- and long-term monitoring, but also in the acute experience. Emerging evidence also highlights an important role of subjective readiness (pre-exercise mental and physical states) in determining how exercise is experience...

Motivational climate can be defined as the environmental status of sport that influences motivation levels. The present study aimed to systematically identify the most widely used measures examining motivational climate. The databases for searching were PsycNET, PubMed and ScienceDirect. The search returned a total of 378 studies of which 8 met the...

Background: The construct of physical literacy is gaining traction internationally and yet measurement of physical literacy is in its infancy. This paper describes the development of a pictorial child report scale of perceived physical literacy based on the comprehensive Australian Physical Literacy Framework, which includes 30 elements within four...

Introduction. The Defence Human Sciences Symposium (DHSS) is the principal Australian forum held each year for those interested in the application of human sciences to enhance defence capability. During DHSS 2019 a facilitated Panel Discussion was convened with invited delegates from Army, Navy, Air Force, academia and DST. The discussion focused o...

Introduction Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is recommended for secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease and reducing the risk of repeat cardiac events. Physical activity is a core component of CR; however, studies show that participants remain largely sedentary. Sedentary behaviour is an independent risk factor for all-cause mortality. Strategie...

Background Healthcare professionals’ (Oncologists, doctors, and nurses) physical activity (PA) recommendations impact patients living with cancer PA levels. General practitioners (GPs) monitor the overall health of patients living with cancer throughout their treatment journey. This is the first study to explore GP’s knowledge, attitudes and practi...

Sport psychologists provide their services in complex settings, with numerous competing demands, resource constraints, and aims/goals for the psychology support service. Research in sport psychology often struggles to characterize the unique challenges of applied practice as it occurs in context. This research examined the delivery of a year-round...

Objective: This research aimed to explore the quality-of-life and experiences of people with Achilles tendinopathy. Design: This mixed-methods research used the 8-dimension Assessment of Quality-of-Life (AQoL-8D), focus groups and grounded theory analysis. AQoL-8D scores were compared with population normative scores. In focus groups, participan...

Background: Health organisations such as the United Nations continue to place an expectation on school physical education (PE) programmes and wider school strategies to ensure students develop physical literacy and receive the well-established benefits of meeting physical activity guidelines. Barriers to meet this expectation such as lack of traine...

Background: Physical education (PE) can be considered the centrepiece of school physical literacy (PL) programs, but ineffective lessons or an absence of PE across the public primary school system has raised concern. This study aimed to evaluate the implementation, acceptability and impact of teacher delivery of PE as part of a multicomponent Physi...

The International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) aims to be the leading international and inclusive organisation focused on the development of sport psychology in all regions and cultural areas of the world. In 2019 with the advent of the ISSP – Registry, a renewed need for an up-to-date code of ethics for practitioners that reflected the missi...

The aim of this communication is to highlight synergies and opportunities between the fields of education, sport and health and the performing arts for the promotion of physical literacy. First, physical literacy is introduced and then defined according to the definition used in this communication. Secondly, we highlight the gap in physical literac...

A literature review commissioned by Play Australia

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether 4 weeks of endurance training could improve tolerance to mental exertion in untrained participants. Design: Longitudinal training study. Method: Twenty untrained young adults (14 F, 6 M; 27.6 ± 6.2 years) completed a 4-week training protocol in a randomised and counterbalanced order. Base...

The green tea amino acid, L-theanine (L-THE) is associated with several health benefits, including improvements in mood, cognition and a reduction of stress and anxiety-like symptoms. This systematic review evaluated the effect of pure L-THE intake, in the form of orally administered nutritional supplements, on stress responses and anxiety levels i...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether individuals who engage in more frequent self-regulation are less susceptible to mental fatigue. Occupational cognitive demand and participation in sports or exercise were quantified as activities requiring self-regulation. Cardiorespiratory fitness was also assessed. On separate occasions, participan...

Purpose: The development of a physical literacy definition and standards framework suitable for implementation in Australia. Method:Modified Delphi methodology. Results: Consensus was established on four defining statements: Core-Physical literacy is lifelong holistic learning acquired and applied in movement and physical activity contexts; Composi...

Objective: In this review we detail the impact of environmental stress on cognitive and military task performance and highlight any individual characteristics or interventions which may mitigate any negative effect. Background: Military personnel are often deployed in regions markedly different from their own, experiencing hot days, cold nights an...

Assessment of physical literacy poses a dilemma of what instrument to use. There is currently no guide regarding the suitability of common assessment approaches. The purpose of this brief communication is to provide a user's guide for selecting physical literacy assessment instruments appropriate for use in school physical education and sport setti...

Purpose: To operationally conceptualize physical literacy (PL) for application in the United States, using a modified Delphi approach, with PL academics. Methods: A sequential, mixed methods, modified Delphi research design was employed, consisting of three phases: (a) literature analysis, (b) Delphi Survey I (22 participants), and (c) Delphi Surve...

Introduction: Despite increases in research and implementation, physical literacy continues to be largely misinterpreted by practitioners. The purpose of this study was to devise, implement, and evaluate a professional development programme that works in a primary school environment to enhance their knowledge and operationalisation of physical lite...

The purpose of this three‐study paper was to develop and validate the Perceived Social Influence in Sport Scale‐2 (PSISS‐2) that aimed to resolve the limitations of PSISS‐1 in assessing the relative social influence of significant others in youth sport. In Study 1, a pool of 60 items generated from revisiting a qualitative dataset about significant...

Mental fatigue reflects a change in psychobiological state, caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity. It has been well documented that mental fatigue impairs cognitive performance; however, more recently, it has been demonstrated that endurance performance is also impaired by mental fatigue. The mechanism behind the detrimental e...

Physical literacy continues to gain global momentum, yet the definition and underlying concept of physical literacy remain contested in both research and practice. This lack of clarity has the potential to undermine the operationalization of physical literacy. This paper considers the various definitions of physical literacy that are currently adop...

The following report provides a summary of the process and impact evaluation of the Bluearth’s Mighty Movers program in the ACT. Mighty Movers was designed to provide parents and families of young children (0-5 years old) with guidance and ideas for how to (a) increase active play, preferably for the whole family; (b) reduce sedentariness and scree...

Physical literacy is creating significant interest worldwide due to its holistic nature and the potential it has to impact on people’s lives. It is underpinning many physical education programs, coaching strategies, health initiatives, and policymakers’ decisions. However, the complex philosophical and holistic nature of the concept has meant that...

Sports performance at the highest level requires a wealth of cognitive functions such as attention, decision making and working memory to be functioning at optimal levels in stressful and demanding environments. Whilst a substantial research base exists focusing on psychological skills for performance (e.g., imagery) or therapeutic techniques for e...

Background: The concept of physical literacy has received increased research and international attention recently. Where intervention programs and empirical research are gaining momentum, their operationalizations differ significantly. Objective: The objective of this study was to inform practice in the measure/assessment of physical literacy vi...

This report summarises a literature review conducted in establishing an academically sound research base for the establishment of a physical literacy definition and standard within Australia. In conjunction with this summary report there are accompanying online resources, including: (a) online citation resource including details of all papers sampl...

Content intended to support the planning of activities to develop physical literacy elements, including connecting across areas.

Early work in the development of physical literacy elements framework for Australia

Money has frequently been used as an extrinsic motivator since it is assumed that humans are willing to invest more effort for financial reward. However, the influence of a monetary reward on pacing and performance in trained athletes is not well-understood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyse the influence of a monetary reward in well-...

ASC public resources published under Creative Commons Licence 3.0 ISBN 978-1-74013-124-7 (PDF) Explaining the concept of physical literacy for an Australian audience, design for application in Australian education, sport and health contexts.

This paper explores the continuing research-practice gap that exists within sport and exercise psychology. It explores the reasons why this gap exists, and, crucially, considers solutions to reduce the magnitude and impact of the gap between researchers and practitioners within the field. In this narrative review, we explore what the consequences m...

While there has been a significant expansion of continued professional development opportunities in recent years, there has often, historically, been a reluctance for sport and exercise psychologists to both share, and receive feedback on their professional practice (Cotterill, Weston and Breslin, 2016). The recent development of the new Case Studi...

While there has been a significant expansion of continued professional development opportunities in recent years, there has often, historically, been a reluctance for sport and exercise psychologists to both share, and receive feedback on their professional practice (Cotterill, Weston and Breslin, 2016). The recent development of the new Case Studi...

Introduction: Mental fatigue has consistently been shown to impair endurance performance including both time to exhaustion tasks and self-paced time trials (Van Cutsem et al., 2017). A recent study however, reported that when compared to recreational endurance athletes, professional endurance athletes performed better on a mentally fatiguing task o...

Background The ergogenic effects of analgesic substances suggest that pain perception is an important regulator of work-rate during fatiguing exercise. Recent research has shown that endogenous inhibitory responses, which act to attenuate nociceptive input and reduce perceived pain, can be increased following transcranial direct current stimulation...

Dataset

This study investigated the psychological states underlying excellent performance in 26 athletes (Mage = 29 years; SD = 7.7) across a range of sports (team, net/wall, sprint, endurance, adventure) and standards (world-class to recreational). Participants were primarily interviewed on average 4 days after excellent performances. The data were analys...

Background The concept of physical literacy has stimulated increased research attention in recent years—being deployed in physical education, sport participation, and the promotion of physical activity. Independent research groups currently operationalize the construct differently. Objective The purpose of this systematic review was to conduct a sy...

Clutch performance is improved performance under pressure. However, little research has examined the psychological state experienced by athletes in these situations. Therefore, this study qualitatively examined the subjective experience underlying clutch performance across a range of sports (e.g., team, individual) and standards (Olympic to recreat...