Robert Schinke

• EdD, ISSP-R, Fel. AASP Fel. ISSP
• Professor (Full) at Laurentian University

Background Cognitive errors involve negatively biased or distorted thinking patterns that can hinder effective decision-making. When such a phenomenon occurs in the exercise domain, this is referred to as exercise-related cognitive error. Such exercise-related cognitive errors are typically assessed via a questionnaire, but a validated instrument f...

There has been considerable discussion for more than 50 years of how scientists and practitioners in elite level sport can work collaboratively to ensure that evidence-based practice augments the sport performance and human development of elite amateur and professional athletes. The bridging of these two, often disparate competencies, science and p...

The aim through this manuscript is to share our career intervention situated in individual, group, and meta-reflective practice, to help elite athletes manage changes in their careers and support their autonomy and development within the Chinese Whole Nation System (CWNS). Translating findings from a science to practice project, we provide an athle...

There is evidence that complex relationships exist between motor functions, brain structure, and cognitive functions, particularly in the aging population. However, whether such relationships observed in older adults could extend to young adults remains to be elucidated. Thus, the current study addressed this gap in the literature by investigating...

Athletes experience mental ill-health at prevalence rates similar to the general population but are reluctant to discuss or seek help for mental ill-health due to stigma, which can impact their status, playing time, or spot on the team. Researchers have alluded to social sequelae of mental ill-health stigma in sport (e.g., ostracization, reduced so...

The international sport psychology community is intricately interconnected with the broader geopolitical landscape. Therefore, our community can be a powerful agent, transforming political polarisation in sports into respectful conversations of differing opinions, valuing diversity, and promoting cultural safety, inclusivity, and ethical practices....

Background and purpose: Researchers have highlighted elite refugee athletes' acculturation and sport-related challenges upon transitioning into host country sports systems. Using a strength-based approach, we aimed to broaden this view through exploring the internal and external factors that have fostered refugee athletes' abilities to find meaning...

Background: This study aimed to investigate associations of meeting 24-hour movement behavior (24-HMB: physical activity [PA], screen time [ST] in the school-aged youth, and sleep) guidelines with indicators of academic engagement, psychological functioning, and cognitive function in a national representative sample of U.S. youth. Methods: In thi...

Sport psychology scholars and practitioners (SPPs) now recognize the importance of cultural competence (CC). However, only a few SPPs have deliberately centered CC in their practice. The purpose of this study was to understand how SPPs conceptualize and develop CC within their professional practice. Our study is grounded in a critical realist ontol...

We aim to advance athlete career scholarship using meta-transitions within the Chinese Whole Nation System (CWNS). The intentions are to: (a) provide in-depth understandings of Chinese elite athletes’ careers through shared dialog, (b) transform knowledge and support prospective athletes, and (c) contribute to the advancement of the CWNS by explori...

Occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMS) promote healthy workplace environments through regulating hazards and health promotion activities. Abuse within elite sports is one hazard that threatens the health and safety of elite adult athletes. Despite the widespread existence of evidence-informed guidelines to safeguard youth athlete...

Highlights •Discussing the construction of theoretical models from a multidisciplinary perspective is an innovative and impactful approach that enhances our understanding of the motivations behind physical activity. Of note, the real impact of variables would vary under different circumstances. •When facing conflicting behavioral choices, the reaso...

This qualitative study was focused on two objectives: to explore (a) Chinese elite athletes' perceptions of their rehabilitation experiences after severe acute injuries, and (b) support strategies facilitating their return to competition. We interviewed 10 Chinese elite athletes through a semi-structured interview guide consisting of open questions...

Adolescent parenting often generates serious challenges for adolescents and their infants, including failure to gain education, homelessness, psychological distress, and poor developmental outcomes. Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) are increasingly being used to help improve parenting, prevent chronic parenting stress, and break the cycle of...

Objectives This study aimed to explore differences between psychological resilience and problem-solving ability in grade one junior middle school adolescents with and without suicidal ideation, focusing on the relationship between these factors and suicidal ideation. Methods Ninety-nine adolescents (aged 10 to 14) were divided into Suicidal Ideati...

There has been a long-standing discourse about science-driven practice, and related, the scientist practitioner, spanning more than 40 years. The International Society of Sport Psychology is devoting considerable attention to scientist practitioners within the recently established International Society of Sport Psychology Registry (ISSP-R) and Supe...

Peer mentors can assist first-year student-athletes transitional demands by offering perspectives and resources to support their adjustment processes. Sports psychology practitioners (SPPs) can form mentoring programs to foster supportive relationships between athletes. We authored this manuscript to showcase the development of a constellation ment...

Occupational health and safety is an overarching framework used to create objective and subjectively safe workplace environments where employees feel safe and experience reduced likelihood of harm. Safe sport is a global movement to create sporting environments where athletes are protected from the harms of abuse. Despite recognition that safe spor...

The media have reported stories of a toxic sport culture in elite gymnastics. Our interdisciplinary research team, through the lens of cultural relativism, sought to present athlete maltreatment as culturally constructed across individual, organizational and national cultural layers in Olympic development contexts. Tracing storied media data from e...

Sport is often touted as a context that can foster the development of positive relationships between people from diverse cultures. Researchers seeking to develop knowledge about how integrative sport programs may be developed have rarely recognized the agency and expertise of asylum seeking and refugee (i.e., forced immigrant) youth. Our focus stem...

The current manuscript contributes to the development of culturally situated athletic career transition literature through an examination of how improved support may be developed for Chinese athletes within their training environment and the Chinese Whole Nation System (CWNS). An overview of the CWNS three-level training network is contextualised t...

This paper pertains to a project which began with an academic research team being recruited by a YMCA management team to help understand how to retain forced migrant youth in YMCA sport programs. Owing to experience working with diverse cultural groups through praxis-oriented approaches, the project team recognized a need to develop an understandin...

Our aim in this chapter is to demonstrate how, and why, researchers and practitioners may benefit through embracing and learning from the diverse approaches taken to studying cross-cultural, multicultural, and intercultural issues. We do so by examining the study of integration, a process in which individuals maintain their cultural heritage while...

There is considerable attention devoted to athlete mental health in high-performance sport. The International Society of Sport Psychology seeks to extend this discourse by expanding the discussion through a lens of occupational health and safety (OHS). Drawing upon knowledge from OHS, the authors have considered existing mental health challenges as...

Although the cancer role is becoming increasingly studied within sports psychology research, there is a dearth of applied interventions for improving the negative consequences caused by the cancer role. Using insights from a previous pilot project drawing on Canadian interuniversity athletes’ stories of a staff cancer and recommendations from athle...

Elite gymnastics sport culture is presently under global scrutiny. Largely ignited by the highly publicized case of serial sexual abuses in USA Gymnastics, multiple national gymnastics teams have disclosed stories of athlete abuse. Our author team utilized media data to investigate the serial sexual abuses that occurred on the Brazilian Men’s Gymna...

In recent years, sport psychology professionals (SPPs) have recognized the importance of being aware of culture in their scholarly and applied practice. However, there is still a discrepancy between this recognition and the apparent implementation of these cultural lenses in sport psychology (SP). With this study, we aimed to explore and understand...

There have been growing discussions across international societies since 2017 focused on athlete wellness and athlete care. The human condition of high-performance athletes requires life balance, holistic personhood, and a functional athletic career with the support of integrative resources from sport organisations. During two successive Internatio...

Drawing on social cognitive theory, we examined a cross-level interaction between coach transformational leadership and the within-individual change in evaluations of perceived coaching competency over a season. We applied linear growth modeling to analyze 246 collegiate competitive basketball players (147 males and 99 females from 24 teams). Our r...

Objectives To facilitate intercultural understanding by centralising forced immigrant youths' voices in the knowledge development phase of a CBPAR project. The aim of this paper is to reveal the role of sport in forced immigrant youths' acculturative journeys in different communities. Methodology We utilized ‘get-to-know-you’ arts-based conversati...

In this paper, the authors share how a career assistance program was developed, implemented, and evaluated with a Swedish elite handball team. Within this case study, the initial version of the career assistance program’s content was created based on the career-long psychological support services in a Swedish handball framework and the first author...

Informal roles can be beneficial or detrimental to sport performance. Researchers have identified negative informal roles within sports and organisational contexts; however, exploration of these roles has been limited to athletes within sports research or staff members within organisational research. To our knowledge, negative informal roles occupi...

Cultural competence, identified as the ability to understand other cultures and being aware of one’s own cultural assumptions, has been found to be important for sport psychology professionals (SPPs). In the current study, one of a few exploring the SPPs’ own perceived cultural competence, a sample of 203 SPPs completed an online survey examining t...

The current study was undertaken to develop an understanding of how sport psychology professionals (SPPs) attribute meaning to the concept of culture within the context of their scholarly and applied work. Researchers examined how 25 internationally located SPPs described the construct of culture using Hill’s (2012) Consensual Qualitative Research....

Our aim in this invited commentary is to stimulate discussion among sport psychology researchers and practitioners regarding the unique developmental challenges and possibilities that Olympic and Paralympic athletes are undergoing during their final – extended year of the Tokyo 2020 quadrenium. We begin the commentary with COVID-19 pandemic (C-19)...

Cultural competence is imperative for ethical and effective practice in applied sport psychology. Nevertheless, research assessing the cultural competence of sport psychology practitioners (SPPs) is scarce. The purpose of the current study was to explore the cultural awareness, beliefs, and behaviors of SPPs. A total of 193 SPPs, both students and...

Objectives Sport involvement has been touted as a way of helping forced migrants (i.e., refugees and asylum seekers) integrate into their host communities. Our aim was to synthesize multi-disciplinary qualitative research and through a sport and exercise psychology lens develop novel interdisciplinary insights of how sport and physical activity may...

The aim of this study was to explore the meanings of women’s cardiovascular disease constructed within the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation (HSF) Facebook page. Posts from HSF and public user comments surrounding the launch of the HSF re-branding were of interest. Ethnographic content analysis was employed to analyze text (n=40), images (n=32),...

Human beings have always felt the urge to search for a deeper meaning to life, a meaning that transcends the mundane of everydayness (Jirásek, 2015). Historically, researchers have equated this search for inner spirituality with one’s religiousness (Zinnbauer et al., 1997). There is a significant amount of literature where authors have examined the...

This consensus statement is the product of the Second International Think Tank on Athlete Mental Health, held on the initiative of the International Society of Sport Psychology. The purposes of the Think Tank were to engage international sport psychology societies and organisations in a discussion about athlete mental health as embedded in an Olymp...

The intertwined nature of music and sport can be seen from the pool deck at low-level swimming competitions to the biggest sporting events such as the World Cup football (soccer) final. Athletes’ use of music has come under increasing scrutiny as sport psychology scientists and practitioners have sought to better understand how it can best be used...

Publishing in peer review journals is an acquired skill that almost any scholar – practitioner can achieve through a systematic approach and practice. The authors of this manuscript are experienced editors from five leading international sport and exercise psychology peer-review journals. Within this manuscript, the contributing authors considered...

More than one in five people living in Canada was born outside of the country (UN, 2017). During 2019-2020, this proportion will increase as the Government of Canada increases the number of immigrants and refugees they welcome (GOC, 2018). Recent migrants are amongst the most active sport participants in Canada and many have proudly represented Can...

The Federal Government has recognized the need for programs aimed at filling labour gaps in Northern Ontario; Sudbury has been chosen as one of the communities for their ‘Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot’ program. One of the criteria of this program is for the community organizations to be involved in helping them integrate into their new commu...

We draw on the concept of the shared mental model to explain the cross-level direct and moderating effects of team trust on the relationship between coach transformational leadership and cohesion. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we analysed 597 national level high school and university volleyball players to test our research model. Our results...

Background: Social support may be beneficial for medical students who must develop adaptive strategies to respond to the demands and challenges during third-year clerkship. We provide a detailed description of the supportive behaviours experienced by third-year students during a longitudinal integrated clerkship (LIC) in the context of rural famil...

Families play an important role in the development of elite athletes. However, little is known about the unique role subsumed by the families of elite immigrant athletes. Our authors sought to extend this understanding through a narrative inquiry approach with nine elite immigrant athletes. Combining transcript data derived from arts-based conversa...

Religious and spiritual observances have been found in sport across parts of the world, notably in South and North America, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa. This is attributed to the indigenes' strong religious and /or spiritual belief in the sacred (God or Allah, a supreme deity, and/ or ancestors), who presumably, can turn the course of any life e...

Summary We facilitated an arts-based mindfulness group program with youths who were receiving short-term inpatient mental health supports within hospital. We aimed to explore the challenges and benefits these marginalized youths experienced through their exposure to the group intervention. Forty pre-group and 24 post-group interviews were analyzed...

This consensus statement is the product of an international Think Tank on the initiative of the International Society of Sport Psychology. The purpose of the Think Tank was to unify major sport psychology organizations in a discussion of the current status and future challenges of applied and research aspects of athlete mental health. The contribut...

This is the 2nd special issue section focused on sport and exercise psychology research and practice in countries referred to as “emerging” in sport and exercise psychology. Promotion of sport psychology research and practice in emerging countries is an important aim in this journal and of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP). This...

The purpose of the current study was to provide an exploratory account of swimmers’ pre-performance routines prior to a successful performance and the influential role that social interaction plays during this time. Eight swimmers’ descriptions of their pre-performance routines were analyzed using an interpretive thematic analysis to identify salie...

Olympic-medal performances represent peak accomplishments in athlete development. Seanor, Schinke, Stambulova, Ross, and Kpazai identified environmental factors in a high-performance Canadian trampoline sport environment that developed decorated Olympic medalists. The current intrinsic case study was authored to further highlight the idiosyncrasies...

The objectives of this study were to (a) develop a conceptualization of role acceptance, later situated within the broader concept of role commitment, pertinent to the sport environment; (b) develop a measure integrating direct perceptions of role commitment and the bases of this variable; and (c) determine if role commitment could predict athletes...

In this article, we discuss some of the identity challenges presented by Canadian National Team Female Boxers, and their possible implications to the athletes’ well-being and sport performance. Three identity challenges identified by the athletes included: (a) being a female boxer in a masculine sport context, (b) acceptance and tensions surroundin...

The current submission was conceived to broaden the discussion around male athletic identities by exploring the stories told by four members of the Canadian National Boxing Team. The athletes’ stories were elicited through an arts-based method followed by a conversational interview. Stories were then analyzed using an interpretive thematic analysis...

There are varied approaches that have been used in sport for development (SFD) projects. This article is focused on the move by sport and exercise psychology researchers toward community-based SFD projects where marginalized groups are centralized. The authors have chosen two of their projects to exemplify different approaches to SFD. An initial pr...

Canadian and US Olympic teams regularly feature immigrant athletes, such as speed skater Maame Biney who was born in Ghana and competes for the US. Like most elite athletes, their families play an important role in their development, one that is made more dynamic and complex by their acculturation to an unfamiliar society (Schinke, Blodgett, McGann...

Objectives: To situate mostly European cultural sport psychology scholarship in a historical backdrop and then to draw on two recent examples from such scholarship to propose future prospects. Design: A review of literature is utilized to situate the recent prominence of cultural sport psychology. This review is written temporally from past, to pre...

Objectives: To situate the current status of accreditation in four key international societies, ASPASP, FEPSAC, AASP, and ISSP, in a historical backdrop and then to draw on these approaches to propose future directions and developments relating to practical standards. Design: A review of the origins and current status of accreditation in four inter...

Athlete development can be described through transitions that mark turning phases throughout athletes’ careers. Our authors explored media data to unpack the career developments of two prominent world champion boxers from their early lives to world championship status. Employing thematic analysis, five themes were identified: (1) weathering hardshi...

There is a lack of research on the social construction of gender and sexuality in elite women’s boxing and the social psychological implications. Building on research that theorizes gender and sexuality as intersecting identities, this study explored elite women boxers’ (n= 10) identities in relation to inclusion and marginalization on the Canadian...

Today it is not uncommon for sports teams and clubs to be ethnically mixed and multicultural. One contributing factor to this diversity is the movement of athletes between and within countries. Although the reason for relocating varies for newcomer athletes, they all experience the challenge of navigating between a home and a new (e.g., receiving)...

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...

This qualitative project is focused on the challenges newcomer athletes revealed when they considered their earliest encounters with a receiving culture during general daily life. Conversational interviews with 24 national and international amateur newcomer athletes were subjected to interpretive thematic analysis and developed into a composite vig...

Olympic athletes' training environments influence their abilities to develop and excel as Olympians. Our authors considered a Canadian trampoline training environment with a history of developing Olympic medal-winning athletes from the grassroots through to Olympic podium. The sport environment is presented, drawing upon guided walks, through a cur...