Mapping ethical positions with regard to a coach’s decision to select (or not) an injured athlete

Abstract

<jats:p> The study’s objective was to map ethical positions with regard to the way in which 219 participants (45 non-athletes, 91 amateur athletes, 28 professional athletes, 17 amateur coaches, 8 professional coaches, and 30 physiotherapists) used various informational cues (an athlete’s indispensability for the team, the importance of the competition, the opinion given by sports medicine professionals, and the injured athlete’s attitude) to judge the acceptability of a coach’s decision to select (or not) an injured athlete just before a competition. The participants specified their judgment of acceptability in 16 scenarios created by combining these information cues under two conditions (selection and non-selection). The data were analyzed using cluster analyses, analyses of variance, and chi-squared tests. We found four clusters. Not selecting an injured athlete was always judged to be acceptable. The four clusters differed in terms of the type of role in sport and the level of acceptability of selecting an injured athlete. A coach’s decision with regard to an athlete’s health may be judged differently, according to the rater’s profile. Enabling athletes to compete while injured might violate ethical principles. Coaches and medical staff should also be aware of and understand their legal responsibilities. </jats:p>

Mapping cognitive positions on fear of retirement among sport professional handball players

“…In order to group participants into a small set of positions regarding their fear of retirement from professional sport, we performed a cluster analysis (raw data) on participants' ratings of each vignette (as used in other studies, e.g., Cantisano et al, 2020;Fruchart et al, 2019;Fruchart et al, 2020). In a two-step process, a hierarchical cluster analysis was followed by a non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis.…”

“…Researchers use this theory to understand the manner in which FEAR OF RETIREMENT FROM SPORT 7 people cognitively combine or integrate several information cues when judging a situation or making a decision. Furthermore, while employing this approach, it is possible to map individuals' judgments into various positions, which has been applied in various domains, such as sports psychology (Fruchart 2021;Fruchart et al, 2019;Fruchart et al, 2020) and health psychology (Cantisano et al, 2020).…”