The Lived Experience of an Athletic Injury : A Descriptive Phenomenological Study
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Authors
Boyle, Scott
Issue Date
2002
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Over 17 million sport injuries are reported annually in the United States alone (Hell, 1993) with an increase in injured intercollegiate athletes. These injuries have a direct impact, whether young or old, on the athletes psychological well-being. This then influences the athletes future health, performance, and risk for further physical injury (Heil, 1993).
Early research has followed the thought process of the athlete and looked at what symptoms the athlete showed and how can we get them participating again. This led to a number of quantitative studies that answered how many and how much. Over time it was realized that the important aspects regarding athletic injury were what is the athlete going through and how can we better facilitate the reentry into sport? This led to the field of sport psychology borrowing theory and methods from general psychology and eventually making adjustments so that the information was more applicable to an athletic setting.
Today, research has taken steps towards a level of legitimacy within the field of psychology. We now have a greater knowledge base in psychology on how athletes function and the issues that prohibit or facilitate this functioning. Currently, the research in the field of sport psychology continues to be quantitative heavy. Because of this there is an open field for researchers willing to use qualitative methods of research and try to find the true meaning of how an athlete experiences all phases of their sport.
Within the following pages the reader will be introduced into the world of athletic injury. The reader will explore the origins of methodology regarding applied methods used on injured athletes, and will eventually experience a qualitative account of how an athlete views their own personal lived experience with an athletic injury. The reader will also be introduced to the findings of this particular study where the injured athlete experiences a three step process within their own personal injury experience. This process consists of the athlete denying the extent of their injury, loosing perception of their personal locus of control, and finally becoming preoccupied with wondering what is in their unknown future. The research uses the descriptive phenomenological method and is intended to broaden the knowledge base that we currently have regarding athletic injury.