“The Team Behind the Team”: Exploring the Organizational Stressor Experiences of Sport Science and Management Staff in Elite Sport

This study explored the organizational stressors encountered by the “team behind the team” (viz., those operating in sport science and management roles) in elite sport and the consequences these can have. Forty support personnel working in elite sport were interviewed. Thematic analyses unveiled 36 lower and 6 higher order themes, which were separated into stressors encountered (e.g., relationship and interpersonal, physical resource, contractual and performance development, organizational structure and logistical) and their consequences (e.g., emotions and outcomes). Building on extant work, this study moves the focus beyond athletes' stress experiences to provide novel insight into those operating in sport science and management roles. The findings offer original insight into the educational needs of sport science and management staff, which can inform practitioners who face increasing demands to work with such personnel, and raise sports organizations' awareness of their duty of care to employees and the factors that need to be managed.     

PHONEMIC PROCESSING OF CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE DEFICITS; WHICH TASKS BEST DISCRIMINATE CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES FROM AVERAGE READERS?

ABSTRACT

This comparative study investigated the levels of phonemic awareness that accounted for differences between children with learning disabilities (LD) and children of average reading ability of the same chronological age level (CA) and younger children of average reading ability at the same reading age level (RA). Two planned comparisons were implemented. All three groups were assessed on three levels of phonemic awareness represented as a hierarchical set: awareness of onset and rime, simple phonemic awareness, and compound phonemic awareness. Compared to the RA group, the LD group performed significantly worse only on the first level of phonemic awareness, the awareness of onset and rime. Results of a stepdown analysis revealed that compared with the CA matched group, the LD group performed significantly worse on compound phonemic awareness with all preceding variables partialled from the analysis. Implications for diagnosis and remediation of learning disabilities is explicated.