Presenter: Courtney Walter
Faculty Advisor: Artur Poczwardowski
Phone: x6800 E-mail: x2cwalt@stlawu.edu

Poster Presentation

The purpose of this study is to determine a set of predictors of burnout in college female athletes participating in basketball, hockey, and track and field at St. Lawrence University.  The term burnout has been defined as "psychological, emotional, or physical withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable sport" (Smith, 1986). The examined variables will include motivation, trait anxiety, perfectionism, fear of failure, and demographic information.  Participants in the study were administered the Burnout Inventory for Athletes (VanYeperen, 1997) to determine those individuals who fall on both extremes of the scoring continuum. They were also administered additional inventories, including a demographic inventory, the Sports Anxiety Scale (Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990), the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993), the Butt Sport Motivation Scale (Butt, 1976), the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990), the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (Conroy, 2001), and the Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960).  Logistic regression (Hosmer & Stanley, 1989) will be used to determine which variables are good predictors of burnout.  A model will be developed to predict the probability of the dependent variable (being prone to burnout vs. not being prone to burnout) based on the values of independent variables.  Follow-up univariate tests in the stepwise method will be conducted as well.  Competing models will then be assessed in an effort to select the “best” model.