Assessment of Professional Circus Students’ Psychological Characteristics at Four Strategic Timepoints over the Scholastic Year: A Longitudinal Study Using the Stress Process Model

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The circus professionalization process entails extensive training to mitigate the high-risk demands which increase stress in artists. In high-risk professions, everyday hassles (challenges) contribute greatly to overall stress. To capture the impact of daily challenges on student-artists, the aim of the current study was to describe the magnitude and pattern of daily challenges as well as their relationships with perceived coping, anxiety, fatigue, and psychological distress. METHODS: Ninety-two students at École Nationale de Cirque (ENC), in Montreal, Canada, completed the Circus Daily Challenges Questionnaire (CDCQ) and scales assessing perceived coping, state anxiety, and fatigue at four time points over 1 school year. The Kessler 6 Non-Specific Psychological Distress Scale (K6) was implemented at one time point. RESULTS: Findings revealed significant fluctuations in challenge level and management of challenges throughout the school year, with schedule, technical development, artistic expression, physical preparation, and sleep reported as high during the two examination periods. The lowest challenge-level scores were achieved following the extended breaks in the annual calendar. Daily challenge positively correlated to state anxiety and fatigue, and negatively correlated with perceived coping. The student-artists reported higher prevalence of moderate psychological distress to general populations. CONCLUSION: Befitting the Stress Process Model, a strong interplay between variables was observed, and the life challenges assessment provides a basis for interventions based upon commonalities across the group, as well as individually tailored.

Body composition profile of Brazilian national circus school students

“…This could explain a great heterogenity in the body composition of the students in accordance to their backgrounds (Africans, Europeans, South American and Natives) as well as differences in body demands from each circus discipline. A similar diversity in population was noticed by Decker (2020) in Canada. This suggests that biological diversity should be an aspect to be taken into account when a multinational circus school's students is analyzed.…”

“…So far, the only comparison we can make with professional circus students is with the recent study developed by Decker (2020), who used a more accurate method (DEXA) for body composition assessment of Montreal National Circus School students and finding a very similar result to ours. Concerning BF%, his results showed 16.2% for woman, 8.9% for men and 11.5% for all; while our study was found 16.8% for woman, 7.1% for men and 11.4% for all.…”

“…This program is free of charge and in the last years, every selected student received a monthly scholarship support (Silva, 2015), allowing the students to dedicate themselves fulltime in a two-year program. The training program goes from Monday through Friday, making 22 to 30 hours of activities weekly turning the workload comparable to high performance athletes (Shrier et al, 2009;Decker, 2020). The intensive training requires specific assessments, planning and monitoring (Bompa & Haff, 2009), aiming efficiency in the body preparation process, prevention of injuries and burnouts (Goudard & Chardon, 2010).…”

“…Therefore, an adequate physical conditioning is the key element to reduce the risk of injuries and enhance performance (Ramirez, 2005), as recommended by the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools (FEDEC) (Demey & Wellington, 2010). The training workload may affect health, wellbeing and artistic performance; it is definitely a critical issue to protect circus students, to optimize the economical investment and to enhance quality of performance (Wanke et al, 2012;Prior et al, 2015), mainly concerning the contemporary circus (Decker, 2020).…”

“…There is little information about body composition concerning professional circus school students. In order to provide more accurate data, as suggested by Hakim et al (2018) and Decker (2020), the goal of this study is to describe the body composition of Brazilian NCS students, believing it will support the training work load planning, as well as, the resting hours, energy needs, food intake and replacements recommendation for individual or specific groups of students.…”