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Interaction of athletes' resilience and coaches' social support on the
stress-burnout relationship: A conjunctive moderation perspective
Frank J.H. Lu
a
,
*
, Wei Ping Lee
b
, Yu-Kai Chang
b
, Chien-Chih Chou
c
, Ya-Wen Hsu
d
,
Ju-Han Lin
e
, Diane L. Gill
f
a
Chinese Culture University, Taiwan
b
National Taiwan Sport University, Taiwan
c
University of Taipei, Taiwan
d
National Chia-Yi University, Taiwan
e
National Dong-Hwa University, Taiwan
f
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
article info
Article history:
Received 22 September 2014
Received in revised form
27 July 2015
Accepted 9 August 2015
Available online 13 August 2015
Keywords:
Competitive sports
Overtraining
Student-athletes
Psychological well-being
abstract
Objective: In line with Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective model of athletic burnout, the purpose of this
study was to examine the conjunctive effects of athletes' resilience and coaches' social support on the
relationship between life stress and burnout.
Design: Cross-sectional, self-report survey.
Methods: A total of 218 student-athletes (M
age
¼20.04 yrs, SD ¼1.32; males ¼159, females ¼59)
participating in team and individual sports completed life stress, resilience, coaches' social support, and
athlete burnout scales. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses with one- two- and three-way in-
teractions examined disjunctive and conjunctive moderations.
Results: Resilience and coaches' social support conjunctively moderated the stress-burnout relationship.
Specifically the interaction of athletes' resilience with coaches' informational and tangible social support
moderated athletes' stress-burnout relationship in high and low life stress conditions.
Conclusions: We suggest coaches provide useful social support and foster athletes' resilience to prevent
stress-induced burnout in athletes.
©2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction
To be successful in competitive sport is never an easy task for
young athletes. Competitors, male or female, must start training at
young ages and engage in year-round vigorous training to be well-
prepared for the competitive season (Gould &Whitley, 2009). On
their journey to success, they not only engage in high intensity
physical training (Manzi et al., 2010;Scott, Lockie, Knight, Clark, &
Janse de Jonge, 2013) but also encounter stressors in competitions,
organizational operations and personal/non-sport life events
(Fletcher, Hanton, &Mellalieu, 2006; McKay, Niven, Lavallee,
White, 2008; Sarkar &Fletcher, 2014). Although stress is an inev-
itable part of competitive sports, it is well-documented that chronic
stress is detrimental to athletes' well-being (DiBartolo &Shaffer,
2002), performance (Humphrey, Yow, &Bowden, 2000), and may
lead to burnout (Gould, Tuffey, Udry, &Loehr, 1996, 1997; Gould,
Udry, Tuffey, &Loehr, 1996).
According to Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective model of athletic
burnout, burnout is a reaction to chronic stress. Smith (1986)
proposed that athletic burnout comprises situational, cognitive,
physiological, and behavioural components that progress in four
stages. The first stage starts with athletes' perceived situational
demands esuch as high conflicting demands, overload training, or
parental expectations/pressure placed on athletes. The second
stage involves cognitive appraisal to interpret these demands;
particularly individuals' cognitive appraisal of the balance between
challenges and resources, and potential consequences. When de-
mands surpass personal resources and consequences will be se-
vere, the process moves to the third stage of physiological and
psychological responses eanxiety, tension, insomnia, and illness.
Finally, physiological and psychological responses lead to rigid and
*Corresponding author. Graduate Institute of Sport Coaching Science, Chinese
Culture University, #55, Hua-Kang Road, Yang-Ming Shang, Taipei, 11114, Taiwan.
E-mail address: frankjlu@gmail.com (F.J.H. Lu).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Psychology of Sport and Exercise
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychsport
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.08.005
1469-0292/©2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209
inappropriate behaviour, decreased performance and withdrawal
from activity.
Past research adopting Smith (1986) model has generally sup-
ported the link between stressors and athlete burnout. For
example, Gould and his colleagues (Gould, Tuffey, et al., 1996;
Gould et al., 1997; Gould, Udry, et al., 1996) reported that situa-
tional and personal factors may interactively contribute to youth
tennis players' burnout. They found psychological stress, such as
high expectations from parents and coaches, pressure to please
others and emphasis on winning/ranking are major factors leading
to burnout. Similarly, Cresswell and Eklund (2006) interviewed 15
elite rugby players and found 8 major stressors (i.e., competition
transitions, pressure to comply with demands, heavy training/
loading, injury, competitive rugby environment, anti-rest culture,
pressure to perform, media/public expectations associated with
burnout.) Further, Gustafsson and colleagues (Gustafsson,
Hassmen, Kenta, &Johansson, 2008) interviewed 10 Swedish elite
athletes who had quit sport due to burnout. Results indicated that
psycho/social stressors such as negative performance demands,
social relations, and lack of social support were the major factors
associated with burnout. Recently, Tabei and colleagues (Tabei,
Fletcher, &Goodger, 2012) interviewed 4 English and 5 Japanese
athletes to explore the relationship between organizational
stressors and burnout. Results suggested multiple demands (e.g.,
training, competition, travel, leadership) linked to the dimensions
of athlete burnout, and specific organizational-related issues e
such as “hard training and insufficient rest”associated with inci-
dence of burnout. These findings provide good evidence that ath-
letes' life stress is associated with athlete burnout.
Although understanding the stress-burnout relationship is
important, it is also imperative to understand the mechanisms
underlying this relationship. More specifically, it is important to
investigate why some athletes are more vulnerable than others to
stress-induced burnout. Empirical sport stress research provides
one approach to this issue by suggesting that resilient athletes can
adapt well even when encountering adversities and stressors
(Fletcher &Sarkar, 2013; Galli &Gonzalez, 2014; Sarkar &Fletcher,
2013, 2014; Sarkar, Fletcher, &Brown, 2015). For example, Galli and
Vealey (2008) adopted Richardson and colleagues' (Richardson,
Neiger, Jensen, &Kumpfer, 1990) resilience model to explore ath-
letes' experiences of adversities (i.e., injury, slump, and career
transition) and how resilience process influences their adaptation.
They found resilience helps these athletes adapt to difficult situa-
tions and promote positive growth. Also, they found sociocultural
influences (e.g., social support) and personal attributes/capabilities
(e.g., mental and physical toughness) interactively facilitated the
resilience process.
Recently, Fletcher and Sarkar’(2012) interviewed 12 Olympic
champions to explore the relationship between psychological
resilience and optimal sport performance. Their resulting “groun-
ded theory of psychological resilience and optimal performance”
suggested that the relationship between Olympic champions'
stressors and optimal performance is a series of dynamic in-
teractions between numerous psychological factors (i.e., positive
personality, motivation, confidence, focus, and perceived social
support) and challenge appraisals and meta-cognition. These pro-
cesses, which in turn promote facilitative responses esuch as
taking decisive actions, strengthening positive cognitions,
increased efforts and commitment; eventually lead to optimal
performance.
The sport resilience research offers several implications for
stress-burnout research. First, it is possible that athletes may
encounter many stressors/adversities but not necessarily experi-
ence burnout because their resilience helps them to adapt to
stressors. This provides a rationale for studying the stress-burnout
relationship from a resilience perspective because much research
indicates that resilient individuals can maintain health and well-
being even high in stress (Fischbacher, 2014; Noor &Alwi, 2013;
Salami, 2010; Windle, Woods, &Markland, 2011). Second, recent
sport resilience research (e.g., Galli &Vealey, 2008; Fletcher &
Sarkar, 2012) suggests that psychological factors interact with
each other to facilitate responses during the resilience process.
Specifically, Galli and Vealey (2008) suggested that sociocultural
influences such as “social support”interact with personal factors to
facilitate resilience process. Fletcher and Sarkar (2012) grounded
theory of psychological resilience and optimal performance also
suggested that social support interacts with other positive per-
sonality traits as the core psychosocial factors in influencing chal-
lenge appraisal and meta-cognitions (Fletcher &Sarkar, 2012).
Therefore, we considered both personal and sociocultural factors in
examining stress-burnout relationship. We included social support
as a socio-cultural factor and athletes' resilience as a personal factor
(e.g., Fletcher &Sarkar, 2012; Galli &Vealey, 2008).
Further, research suggests social support can be provided by
many people in sport settings such as family, friends, teammates,
coaches, managers, fitness trainers, physiotherapists, and psy-
chologists (Reese, Hardy, &Freeman, 2007). However, because
coaches are considered particularly close to athletes (Jowett &
Poczwardowski, 2007), we focused on the role of coaches' social
support in the stress-burnout relationship. Moreover, because both
Galli and Vealey (2008) and Fletcher and Sarkar (2012) research
suggested “interaction”effects of psychological factors in the
resilience process, we adopted Smith and colleagues' (Smith, Smoll,
&Ptacek, 1990) suggestion by using a conjunctive moderating
approach to examine the joint moderating effects of athletes'
resilience and coaches' social support on the stress-burnout
relationship.
In sum, the purpose of this study was to examine the conjunc-
tive effects of athletes' resilience and coaches' social support on the
stress-burnout relationship. We hypothesized that there is a
conjunctive moderating effects of athletes' resilience and coaches'
social support on the stress-burnout relationship both in high and
low stress conditions.
Method
Participants
A total of 218 Taiwanese Division-I college student-athletes
(Females ¼59; Males ¼159) were recruited for this study. All
participants were representing their school teams with an age
range of 18e25 years (M¼20.0, SD ¼1.3). Participants had an
average of 9.1 years (SD ¼2.8) of participation in their sports,
training days per week (M¼5.5, SD ¼1.1), and training hours per
day (M¼4.3, SD ¼1.1) in the individual sports of track and field,
taekwondo, tennis, and archery (n¼162) or team sports of
basketball and baseball (n¼56).
Procedure
After gaining the approval of the Institutional Review Board, the
authors contacted all participants through each team's head
coaches. Data were collected through pen-and-paper surveys
distributed to six sport teams (archery, baseball, basketball, taek-
wondo, tennis, track). Participants were informed that the general
purpose of the study was to examine their life experiences as col-
legiate athletes, and that questionnaire responses would remain
anonymous and be analysed by group. No individual information
was revealed by this study. After participants understood the study
and agreed to participate, they completed the survey package. It
F.J.H. Lu et al. / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209 203
took approximately 20 min to complete the survey, which was
administered either before or after each team's training session.
Measures
Life stress
Life stress was assessed using the 24-item College Student-
Athlete Life Stress Scale (CSALSS; Lu, Hsu, Chan, Cheen, &Kao,
2012). This scale consists of eight subscales that tap into two
main domains of stressors; general life stressors (academic re-
quirements, family relationships, interpersonal relationships,
romantic relationships) and sport life stressors (coach relation-
ships, performance demand, sports injury, training adaptation).
Participants responded to the 24-items on a 6-point Likert scale
from 1 (never) to 6 (always). The generic stem for the CSALSS was “I
am worried about …”and example items include “…being injured
frequently”,“…my poor academic skills”, and “…my unstable
competition performance”. The internal consistency for the eight
factor CSALSS ranged from .72 to .86 and the total coefficient was
appropriate (
a
¼.86).
Resilience
To assess participants' resilience, we used the abbreviated
version of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale e2 (CD-RISC2;
Vaishnavi, Connor, &Davidson, 2007). The CD-RISC2 assesses in-
dividuals' resilience as a personality trait. The two items were taken
from the original CDeRISC (Connor &Davidson, 2003), namely
“Able to adapt to change”and “Tend to bounce back after illness or
hardship.”Respondents answered the two items according to “How
true it describes them”on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not
true at all) to 5 (true nearly all of the time). Internal consistency of
the CD-RISC2 in this study was marginal (
a
¼.66).
Social support
The recently developed Athletes' Received Support Question-
naire (ARSQ; Freeman, Coffee, Moll, Rees, &Sammy, 2014) was used
to assess the social support that athletes received. The 22-item
ARSQ measures four types of social support namely, emotional
support (5-item), esteem support (5-item), informational support
(6-item), and tangible support (6-item). The stem was slightly
modified to measure coaches' social support; “In the last week, how
often did your coach …”and all responses range on a 5-point fre-
quency scale with 1 (not at all), 2 (once or twice), 3 (three or four
times), 4 (five or six times), and 5 (seven or more times). Cronbach's
a
for all four of the subscales were good ranging from .90 to .94.
Burnout
Burnout was assessed using the 15-item Athlete Burnout
Questionnaire (ABQ; Raedeke &Smith, 2001), which was designed
to measure athletes' burnout symptoms. The ABQ is composed of
three subscales namely emotional or physical exhaustion, reduced
sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation. The stem for each
item is; “How often do you feel this way about your participation in
your current sport?”Participants indicated on a 5-point Likert scale
with 1 (Almost never) to 5 (Almost Always). Internal consistency
for the ABQ was good (
a
¼.89).
Data analysis
Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to
assess the disjunctive (single) and conjunctive (interactive)
moderation effects. To reduce multicollinearity among the main
effects and interaction terms, scores of all independent (predictor)
variables were standardized before calculation of the two-way and
three-way interaction product terms (Finney, Mitchell, Cronkite, &
Moos, 1984; Mitchell, Evans, Rees, &Hardy, 2014). A total of four
analyses were conducted with the standardized independent var-
iables (life stress, resilience, four types of support eemotion,
esteem, information, and tangible) and burnout as the dependent
variable.
The variables were entered for the three steps of each analysis as
follows: Step 1 (main effects: life stress, resilience, emotional/
esteem/informational/tangible support); Step 2 (two-way in-
teractions: life stress resilience, life stress emotional/esteem/
informational/tangible support, resilience emotional/esteem/
informational/tangible support); Step 3 (three-way interactions:
life stress resilience emotional/esteem/informational/tangible
support). Two-way (disjunctive) or three-way (conjunctive) inter-
action is established if there is a significant change in the R
2
from
Step 1 to 2 and Step 2 to 3 respectively. The procedures recom-
mended by Cohen and Cohen (1983) were used to plot interaction
effects by defining the high and low groups of both resilience and
different types of social support if any of the two-way interaction
terms was significant in the regression equation. For significant
three-way interactions, Dawson and Richter (2006) test for signif-
icant differences between slopes was conducted to plot the inter-
action effects. An alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests.
Results
Descriptive statistics and correlations for the variables analysed
in this study are presented in Table 1. Based on the means and
standard deviations of the variables, it was found the athletes had a
moderate level of life stress and high resilience. The amount of
social support the athletes received was moderate to high. Lastly,
the athletes' burnout level was moderate. As shown in Table 1, all
correlations between life stress and burnout (IV and DV), and
resilience and 4 types of social support (potential moderators)
ranged from r¼.15 to .33.
Moderation testing
(I) Hierarchical regression analyses with life stress, resilience,
and emotional social support predicting burnout
Results from the hierarchical multiple regression analyses were
used to determine whether resilience and four types of social
support disjunctively or conjunctively moderate the relationship
between life stress and burnout are presented in Table 2. The main
effects entered in Step 1 of the first analysis accounted for 21.2% of
variance in burnout, F(3, 214) ¼19.134, p<.001. Only life stress
(b¼2.902, p<.001) and resilience (b¼1. 512, p¼.003) signifi-
cantly predicted burnout, thereby reflecting that higher life stress
and lower resilience results in higher burnout. No moderator ef-
fects were found for the two-way interaction terms at Step 2 and
three-way interaction term at Step 3.
(II) Hierarchical regression analyses with life stress, resilience,
and esteem social support predicting burnout
For the second analysis, the main effects entered at Step 1,
accounted for 23.0% of variance in burnout, F(3, 214) ¼21.274,
p<.001. Life stress (b¼2.718, p<.001) positively, resilience
(b¼1.348, p¼.009) negatively, and esteem support (b¼1.487,
p¼.006) negatively predicted burnout. Reflecting that higher life
stress, lower resilience and esteem support were related to higher
burnout. No disjunctive moderator effects were found when the
two-way interaction terms were entered at Step 2. However, the
final interaction term (i.e., life stress resilience esteem support)
was statistically significant (p¼.043) and accounted for a 1.5%
F.J.H. Lu et al. / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209204
increase in the explained variance. Dawson and Richter (2006) test
for significant differences between slopes were conducted to
interpret the significant conjunctive moderation. Despite the final
interaction term was statistically significant in R
2
change of the
hierarchical multiple regression analysis, no differences were found
between the six pairs of the four slopes; hence no support for
conjunctive moderation was established.
(III) Hierarchical regression analyses with life stress, resilience,
and informational social support predicting burnout
The main effects of the third analysis explained 22.3% of vari-
ance at Step 1, F(3, 214) ¼20.459, p<.001. Similar to the previous
analysis, life stress (b¼2.798, p<.001), resilience (b¼1.399,
p¼.007), and informational support (b¼1.281, p¼.017)
significantly predicted burnout. The introduction of the two-way
interaction terms at Step 2 did not result in a significant R
2
change. However, the combination of resilience and informational
support was found to interact in a conjunctive manner to influence
the relationship between life stress and burnout. As shown in
Table 2, the final interaction term had a significant increase of 2.6%
in accounted variance (p¼.007). The conjunctive moderation was
further interpreted with the test for significant differences between
slopes (Dawson &Richter, 2006). Results indicated that under low
life stress, participants with high resilience and low informational
support are less prone to burnout than athletes who are low in both
resilience and informational support (t¼2.417, p¼.016). In addi-
tion, athletes who are low in resilience but high in informational
support are also less susceptible to burnout than athletes who are
low in both resilience and informational support (t¼2.047,
p¼.042). Fig. 1 presents the interpretation of the conjunctive
moderation effects.
(IV) Hierarchical regression analyses with life stress, resilience,
and tangible social support predicting burnout
The main effects of the final analysis accounted for 23.5% of
variance in Step 1, F(3, 214) ¼21.945, p<.001. Revealing that all 3
variables significantly predicted burnout, namely life stress
(b¼2.741, p<.001), resilience (b¼1.3 01, p¼.011), and tangible
support (b¼1.61 2 , p¼.002). Similar to three of the previous
analysis, no disjunctive moderator effects was found at Step 2.
However, the final interaction term (life stress resilience tangible
support) was statistically significant (p¼.007) with an increase of
2.6% in R
2
. Further analysis found that athletes with high resilience
and tangible support are less susceptible to burnout than athletes
with high resilience but low tangible support (t¼2.013, p¼.045)
in the high life stress condition. In addition, similar to the previous
conjunctive moderator effect, athletes who are high resilience but
with low tangible support are less prone to burnout compared with
athletes who are low on both resilience and tangible support
(t¼2.566, p¼.011) in the low life stress condition. Fig. 2 is plotted
according to findings of the test for significant differences between
slopes (Dawson &Richter, 2006).
Discussion
In line with Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective model of athletic
burnout, this study examined the conjunctive moderating effects of
athletes' resilience and coaches' social support on stress-burnout
Table 1
Descriptive statistics for life stress, resilience, social support, and burnout (N ¼218).
Variable 1 2 34567
1. Life stress .86
2. Resilience .15* .66
3. SS eemotional .32** .10 .94
4. SS eesteem .33** .19** .82** .94
5. SS einformational .31** .17* .77** .89** .92
6. SS etangible .29** .20** .75** .75** .82** .90
7. Burnout .41** .24** .23** .32** .29** .32** .89
M71.31 8.46 16.78 19.27 23.44 21.52 35.04
SD 15.35 1.72 5.50 5.76 6.45 6.66 8.32
Note. Alpha values are diagonal, correlation values below diagonal. SS ¼social support. *p<.05, **p<.01.
Table 2
Hierarchical regression analyses with life stress, resilience, and social support predicting burnout (N ¼218).
Criterion Variable Unstandardized regression coefficients
Burnout FR
2
D
R
2
LS R Emo SS LS RLSEmoSS R Emo SS LS REmoSS
Step 1 19.134 .212 2.902** 1.512** .866
Step 2 10.048 .222 .011 3.005** 1.366** .734 .480 .499 .672
Step 3 8.755 .226 .004 3.071** 1.536** .790 .512 .556 .694 .466
Burnout FR
2
D
R
2
LS R Est SS LS RLSEst SS R Est SS LS REstSS
Step 1 21.274 .230 2.718** 1.348** 1.487**
Step 2 10.729 .234 .004 2.710** 1.307* 1.428** .450 .212 .372
Step 3 9.925 .249 .015 2.979** 1.668** 1.629** .339 .155 .340 .996*
Burnout FR
2
D
R
2
LS R ISS LS RLSISS R ISS LS RISS
Step 1 20.459 .223 2.798** 1.399** 1.281*
Step 2 10.374 .228 .005 2.802** 1.315* 1.249* .525 .189 .459
Step 3 10.207 .254 .026 3.109** 1.879** 1.481** .252 .262 .509 1.238**
Burnout FR
2
D
R
2
LS R TSS LS RLSTSS R TSS LS RTSS
Step 1 21.945 .235 2.741** 1.301* 1.612**
Step 2 11.097 .240 .005 2.705** 1.230* 1.605** .645 .034 .462
Step 3 10.872 .266 .026 3.058** 1.781** 1.882** .396 .117 .605 1.263**
Note: Main effects entered at Step 1. Main effects and two-way interactions entered at Step 2. Main effects, two-way interactions, and three-way interaction entered at Step 3;
Degrees of freedom: Step 1 (3, 214), Step 2 (6, 211), Step 3 (7, 210); LS ¼life stress, R ¼resilience, Emo SS ¼emotional support, Est SS ¼esteem support, ISS ¼informational
support, TSS ¼tangible support. All models are significant at p<.001; *p<.05, **p<.01.
F.J.H. Lu et al. / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209 205
relationship. Results found athletes' resilience and the two types of
coaches' social support dinformational and tangible social support
conjunctively moderated the stress-burnout relation in high and
low stress conditions. Specifically, under low life stress, athletes
with high resilience but low informational support, or low resil-
ience but high informational support are less prone to burnout than
those who are both low in resilience and informational social
support. As to coaches' tangible social support, there are two
conjunctive moderations. In the high life stress conditions, we
found athletes who are both high in resilience and tangible support
are less susceptible to burnout than those with high resilience but
low tangible support. However, in the low life stress condition,
findings revealed that athletes with high resilience but low tangible
support are less prone to burnout than those both low in resilience
and tangible support.
Our results confirm that high stress is associated with athlete
burnout (e.g., Cresswell, 2009;Cresswell &Eklund, 2006;
Gustafssonn, Kentta, &Hassmen, 2011; Gustafsson &Skoog,
2012; Raedeke &Smith, 2004;Tabei et al., 2012), that high resil-
ience is negatively associated with stress-induced outcomes (e.g.,
King, King, Fairbank, Keane, &Adams, 1998; Rutter, 2007; Silver,
2009; Waysman, Schwarzwald, &Solomon, 2001), and that social
support is negatively associated with burnout (e.g., Huynh,
Xanthopoulou, &Winefield, 2013; Raedeke &Smith, 2004; Udry,
Gould, Bridges, &Tuffey, 1997).
The results have implications for future research. First, this
study, to the best of our knowledge, was the first study using
resilience theory in examining stress-burnout. Past sport resilience
research mostly focuses on how resilient personality protects
against trauma (King et al., 1998; Waysman et al., 2001), or facili-
tates positive adaptation (e.g., Galli &Vealey, 2008) or performance
(e.g., Fletcher &Sarkar, 2012;Morgan, Fletcher, &Sarkar, 2013,
2015). Very few studies have examined athletes' stress-burnout
relationship from a resilience perspective. Our study extends
sport resilience research to the stress-burnout relationship.
Another strength of our study was using a conjunctive approach
to examine the interaction of athletes' resilience and coaches' social
support; and its influence on the stress-burnout relationship. As
Smith and colleagues (Smith et al., 1990) suggested that some
moderators may function more effectively in the presence of other
moderators, rather than singularly. Smith and colleagues (Smith
et al., 1990) indicated that the single moderator approach not
only has limitations in revealing the complexity of behaviour but
also hinders our understanding of how another potential moder-
ator may mask the underlying mechanism (Smith et al., 1990,
p.361). Our study, using the conjunctive approach, revealed the
complexity of athletes' resilience and coaches' social support on the
stress-burnout relationship.
The findings of the conjunctive effects of coaches' social support
and athletes' resilience are worthy or further discussion. Specif-
ically, we found coaches' information and tangible support
Fig. 1. Conjunctive moderation: the joint moderating effect of resilience and informational support.
Fig. 2. Conjunctive moderation: the joint moderating effect of resilience and tangible support.
F.J.H. Lu et al. / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209206
combined with athletes' resilience conjunctively moderated stress-
burnout relationship. Our results are in line with previous findings
that tangible social support moderated the relationship between
stress and negative affect (Freeman et al., 2014), and that co-
workers’informational social support reduced the negative effect
of job stress (AbuAlRub, 2004) and facilitated cancer patients'
adjustment of life (Helgeson &Cohen, 1996). According to the
literature, informational support refers to the provision of advice
and guidance; such as helping athletes deal with slumps/set-backs,
failures, problems of training and competitions, and enhance
athlete fitness (Rees &Hardy, 2000). On the other hand, tangible
support is concrete instrumental assistance, in which a person in a
stressful situation is given the necessary resources (Cutrona &
Russell, 1990; Freeman et al., 2014; Rees &Hardy, 2004; Rees
et al., 2007). Thus, our results add to our understanding of how
coaches' informational/tangible social support may function in
athletes' stress-burnout relationship.
We did not find any conjunctive moderating effects of coaches'
esteem or emotional social support, and that need further study.
Emotional social support is the provision of comfort, security, and a
sense that individual is loved and care for, while esteem social
support refers to the bolstering of an individual's sense of compe-
tence (Freeman et al., 2014; Rees &Hardy, 2004, 2000; Rees et al.,
2007). Past studies found both emotional social support and esteem
social support negatively correlated with athlete burnout
(Freeman, Coffee, Rees, &2011). The reasons for failing to support
past research are unclear. Our participants were all adults, experi-
enced, and competitive-oriented Division-I athletes. They may
need coaches' informational and tangible social support more than
esteem and emotional support. As past leadership literature sug-
gested (Chelladurai &Carron, 1983; Horn, 2002; Martin, Jackson,
Richardson, &Weiller, 1999) mature athletes preferred instruc-
tion and training from their coaches as compared to young athletes.
However, this interpretation needs to be verified with future
research.
Limitations and future suggestions
Several methodological and interpretive issues must be dis-
cussed. First, the CSALSS scale has only been validated in Taiwan,
future study is needed to validate CSALSS and examine its' corre-
lations with athlete burnout in other cultures. Also, recently, other
forms of athletic stressors such as organizational stressors (Arnold,
Fletcher, &Daniels, 2013) can be used to examine the stress-
burnout relationship in the future. Further, this study used the
two-item CD-RISC2 (Vaishnavi et al., 2007), which is limited in
several ways. First, the internal consistency of the CD-RISC2 in this
study was only marginal (
a
¼.66). Vaishnavi and colleagues
(Vaishnavi et al., 2007) claimed that CD-RISC2 is a good represen-
tative of the overall Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC,
Connor &Davidson, 2003). However, too few items cannot capture
the whole concept of resilience, limiting its application and inter-
pretation. Also, the CD-RISC2 was developed in non-sport settings,
and measures individual traits just as the original 25-item CD-RISC
did (Sarkar &Fletcher, 2013, p.272). Therefore, there is an urgent
need to develop a sport-specific measure of resilience that com-
prises three pivotal components eadversity, positive adaptation,
and protective factors ein a tripartite fashion in order to accurately
assessing resilience in sport.
Furthermore, this study's findings of the associations between
student-athletes’life stress, resilience, coaches' social support, and
burnout do not imply a causal relationship. We suggest that future
studies adopt a longitudinal design with independent variables (i.e.,
life stress, resilience, and social support) predicting the dependent
variable (i.e., burnout) at a later time to examine causal effects.
Further, the participants in this study were all student-athletes.
Therefore, the results could not be generalized to other athletes
such as professional athletes or junior athletes. Additionally, the
data were collected from Taiwanese student-athletes; hence the
results may not be generalizable to different cultures. We recom-
mend researchers adopt similar approaches to measure student-
athletes' life stress and its association with burnout/injury, and also
investigate their relationship along with social support and
resilience.
Applied implications
To apply our research we offer the following suggestions. First, it
is important to help athletes prevent and alleviate burnout. We
suggest that sport organizations, administration units and athletic
teams need to collaborate to offer educational programs teaching
life skills and time management. Programs such as “Challenge
Athletes' Minds for Personal Success”(CHAMPS) Life Skills program
can teach student-athletes academic, athletic, career, and com-
munity service life skills (Ahlgren-Bedics &Monda, 2009) to help
them to reduce life stress such as time conflicts, interpersonal re-
lations, and academic pressures.
To foster athletes' resilience we can start by reducing athletes'
risk factors and stressors (Masten &Reed, 2002). Ferrante and
colleagues (Ferrante, Etzel, &Pinkney, 1991) proposed a service
provision model that integrates athletic and student affairs offices
and personnel to provide counselling services (e.g., athletic di-
rectors, sport medicine assistants, coaches, tutors, faculty mem-
bers, as well as staff in counselling centre, learning centre, minority
affairs, student health, and residence life). Thus, the support system
may help athletes to reduce risk factors in athletics (e.g., over-
training, injury), or other life crisis (e.g., interpersonal difficulties,
poor academic performance of leaning difficulties).
Further, to strengthen athletes' resilience we might promote
athletes' protective factors (Fletcher &Sarkar, 2012; Sarkar &
Fletcher, 2014). These protective factors include positive personal-
ity (e.g., optimism, hope, competitiveness, proactivity), motivation,
confidence, focus, and social support. Furthermore, coaches, ad-
ministrators, or sport psychology consultants many introduce
resilience training programs for athletes (e.g., Reivich, Seligman, &
McBride, 2011; Schinke, Peterson, &Couture, 2004). Generally,
resilience training programs include all types of challenge appraisal
and meta-reflective strategies training such as evaluating personal
strengths and weakness, minimizing negative thoughts, chal-
lenging counterproductive beliefs, and cognitive restructuring.
Moreover, to facilitate social support, sport professionals can
incorporate different sources of social support, such as coaches,
parents, teachers, and peers, as well as different types of social
support, such as informational, emotional, tangible and esteem
social support into their helping system. We also suggest that sport
professionals may help athletes by matching specific types of social
support with specific stressor (Rees &Hardy, 2004).
Conclusion
Athlete burnout is a prominent issue in competitive sports
because it influences young athletes' health, performance, moti-
vation, and psychological well-being. By adopting Smith's (1986)
cognitive-affective model of athletic burnout and conjunctive
moderating approach we found variables may interactively influ-
ence athlete burnout. Interaction of athletes' resilience and
coaches' social support is just a starting point for research on this
issue. With increasing numbers of youth engaging in competitive
sports every year, the problems of burnout require attention. Sport
F.J.H. Lu et al. / Psychology of Sport and Exercise 22 (2016) 202e209 207
psychology researchers should address this issue, particularly from
the perspective of student-athletes' life stress.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend their appreciations toward
Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan for its research grant
NSC 101-2410-H-179-004-MY2.
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