The main purpose of this study was to examine own and social influence on perfectionismwith Individual athletes. The participants (n= 96) of this study represented ten different sportsand their ages was between 15 and 44. An interview with four of the participant wasconducted. The instruments used for this study was the Positive and Negative PerfectionismScale (Terry-Short et al., 1995) and for the interviews questions was based on own and socialinfluence. The results showed that there was a relationship between positive perfectionismand own influence, negative perfectionism and own influence, negative perfectionism andsocial influence.

The aim of the study was to a) examine what leader behaviors individual and team athletes prefer and b) examine what leader behaviors men and women prefer. A questionnaire (The Leadership Scale for Sports) was distributed to 168 individuals, from which 130 were included in the study. The data was analyzed in SPSS, in which a three-way and a two-way variance analysis were performed. The results showed that Individual athletes preferred the behavior dimensions ?Training and instruction?, ?Positive feedback? and ?Democratic behavior? to a higher degree than did team athletes.

This study used a qualitative interview design to explore the experiences of seven Swedish female elite athletes and their career retirement. The athletes were engaged in three different sports; track and field (athletics), handball and golf and five of them are former professional or semi-professional athletes. The process of their athletic role exit was based on the theoretical findings of Ebaugh (1988) and her four phases: First Doubts, Seeking Alternatives, The Turning Point and Creating the Ex-Role. The findings reveal that for these female former elite athletes Seeking Alternatives already starts before the First Doubts and that possibly the athletes at an early stage have insights of the discontinuity of their athletic career. The importance of transferring their role residual to future paths in life was stressed among the female athletes in order to be able to have a smooth transition process.

Purpose/Aim: The aim of this thesis was to study the construction of gender and to compare Media?s portrayal of male and female athletes.Material/Method: 140 articles covering seven famous Swedish male and female athletes were selected from two Swedish newspapers (Aftonbladet and Expressen). The articles has been analysed within the frames of Norman Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis.Main results: Male athletes are often described in powerful ways and are framed as being strong and successful. Skills and strengths of women athletes are often devalued in comparison to standards of hegemonic masculinity and self-control. They are often framed as women and girlfriends in advantage of the fact that they are athletes..

Retiring from elite sport can be a difficult and disruptive process for an elite athlete. To improve the quality of the transition after retirement, elite athletes are recommended to have dual careers which mean they combine their sport with education to be prepared for a new career when they retire from elite sport. To help elite student-athletes with this combination, universities and sport organizations provide different kind of support. This study was conducted and aimed to investigate elite athletes? perceptions of support offered by a university in Sweden and the elite athletes? perceptions of combining top level sport and academic studies.

In todays society sports has become a major part in people?s life, with the emerging of professionalization it?s become a thriving business that generates big money. An outcome of this evolution of sports as meant that most athletes must put more time and energy in to their athletics to have a chance to reach their dreams of being a professional athlete. And if an athletes dream get cut short somehow, the process of moving out of sport has been shown to somtimes be a difficult process for athletes that don?t have anything to fall back on.

This paper used a qualitative technique from a social scientific perspective, a model based on Hewitt and his theory of the self-concept. The purpose of this study was to investigate why some elite athletes experience troublesome periods after their career ending. Interviews were performed with five elite athletes with varying experiences after career ending. The length of the elite athlete careers vary between 7 to 17 years. Two groups were made based upon experiences after career ending.

Abstract Aim: Since there is a lack of research based educational interventions concerning the relationship between coaches and young athletes, the aim of this study was to implement and examine the effects of sport psychology intervention for coaches in a track and field club. The research questions were: What are the effects of an educational intervention for coaches, with focus on a motivational climate, on: A) the coaches´ coaching approach B) their athletes´ goal orientation and C) their athletes´ perceived competitive anxiety?Method: The coach education stretched over two months and consisted of four two-hour lessons with focus on motivational climate, goal orientation and sport anxiety. Six coaches (three females, three males), aged 38-52 (M=44.33 years, SD=4.84) and their 59 athletes (27 males and 32 females) aged 12-14 (M=13.10 years, SD=0.82), participated in the study. A control group of 35 athletes (10 males and 25 females), of the same age (M=13.46 years, SD=0.70) and with similar demographic data, was also recruited.

The aim of this study was to examine how sports journalists used religious metaphors when covering football during the time span of the study, and how the athletes were portrayed as a result of the usage. The aim was also to study if the usage differed between the two newspapers chosen for the study, one of which is a morning paper (Dagens Nyheters sport section) and one which is an evening paper (Sportbladet).To answer our questions we used a quantitative and a qualitative method, the later of the two was based on a metaphor analysis. The quantitative method consisted of a content analysis where different variables were examined. The time span of the study is articles from one year.The results show that the religious metaphors were used in many ways. Some religious metaphors, such as ones including the word miracle, were more prominent than others.

Abstract Aim: Since there is a lack of research based educational interventions concerning the relationship between coaches and young athletes, the aim of this study was to implement and examine the effects of sport psychology intervention for coaches in a track and field club. The research questions were: What are the effects of an educational intervention for coaches, with focus on a motivational climate, on: A) the coaches´ coaching approach B) their athletes´ goal orientation and C) their athletes´ perceived competitive anxiety?Method: The coach education stretched over two months and consisted of four two-hour lessons with focus on motivational climate, goal orientation and sport anxiety. Six coaches (three females, three males), aged 38-52 (M=44.33 years, SD=4.84) and their 59 athletes (27 males and 32 females) aged 12-14 (M=13.10 years, SD=0.82), participated in the study. A control group of 35 athletes (10 males and 25 females), of the same age (M=13.46 years, SD=0.70) and with similar demographic data, was also recruited.

This report is an analysis from a gender perspective of more than three hundred minutes in sports broadcasting on SVT and TV4. The study explains how air time is divided between male and female athletes as well as which sports, male or female, get the most air time. The sports are also categorized according to attitudes about the sports being masculine, feminine or neutral. In this way the study also shows the categories of sports that are given the most airtime.Our view before the study was that from a media perspective, the Swedish sports world was very male dominated. The results show that male athletes get more exposure than female athletes on both channels, this despite the fact that the membership of the Swedish sports clubs is fairly evenly divided between men and women. .

?Never!? That was the answer UFC President Dana White gave when asked when women would be seen in the UFC. Two years later the first fight between two women took place and now there?s more than 50 female competitors in the UFC - an organisation that earlier was reserved only for men.?Women will never fight in the UFC? ? A qualitative content analysis of the depiction of women?s MMA in media is a study which focuses on how women?s MMA and Ronda Rousey as an individual athlete are portrayed in american internet based MMA media, with a gender research perspective. This study also investigates how the introduction of the first women?s division in the UFC might have affected the depiction women?s MMA in media.The theoretical framework consists of gender theory concepts such as gender performativity, the man as norm, sports and masculinity.

ECG-Screening for young elite athletesAbstractBackgroundSudden cardiac death (SCD) during physical activity is a frightening and emotional tragedy that draws huge media attentions when it occurs. Fortunately it is a relatively uncommon occurrence but happens nonetheless to young athletes who often seems to be in perfect health. SCD is used as a term for sudden unexpected complications on the cardiovascular system that leads to a deadly outcome normally within the first hour of onset of symptoms and the cause is some sort of underlying cardiovascular disease that gets triggered by physical activity.Normally athletes gets divided into two groups dependent on age, over and under 35 years, and this studies focus is on the younger group since it is often during this period athletes are at the elite level. It is also in this category the most unexpected sudden deaths occur that is not due to coronary atherosclerosis, which is the dominant cause of death, and drastically increases, for people over 35 years old.AimThe aim of this study was to scientific and unbiased analyze peer-reviewed clinical articles todescribe the pros, cons and cost to implement an ECG-screening as a standard before physicalactivities for specifically defined elite athletes.MethodA systematic review was performed and after all data collection 21 articles was chosen to beused as a base for both background and analyze. At the end 10 articles was fulfilling the criteria to be used at the analyze and later the results.ResultsThe implementation of ECG-screening has reduced SCD in Italy by 89 % between the years 1979-2004.

ECG-Screening for young elite athletesAbstractBackgroundSudden cardiac death (SCD) during physical activity is a frightening and emotional tragedy that draws huge media attentions when it occurs. Fortunately it is a relatively uncommon occurrence but happens nonetheless to young athletes who often seems to be in perfect health. SCD is used as a term for sudden unexpected complications on the cardiovascular system that leads to a deadly outcome normally within the first hour of onset of symptoms and the cause is some sort of underlying cardiovascular disease that gets triggered by physical activity.Normally athletes gets divided into two groups dependent on age, over and under 35 years, and this studies focus is on the younger group since it is often during this period athletes are at the elite level. It is also in this category the most unexpected sudden deaths occur that is not due to coronary atherosclerosis, which is the dominant cause of death, and drastically increases, for people over 35 years old.AimThe aim of this study was to scientific and unbiased analyze peer-reviewed clinical articles todescribe the pros, cons and cost to implement an ECG-screening as a standard before physicalactivities for specifically defined elite athletes.MethodA systematic review was performed and after all data collection 21 articles was chosen to beused as a base for both background and analyze. At the end 10 articles was fulfilling the criteria to be used at the analyze and later the results.ResultsThe implementation of ECG-screening has reduced SCD in Italy by 89 % between the years 1979-2004.

The goal with our research has been to describe how often and in what way female athletes are represented in the sport section in Sweden?s biggest evening newspaper Aftonbladet. The material we?ve used are the newspapers that we collected during two weeks in 2008, the 3rd of November to the 9th of November and the 11th of November to the 17th of November. We?ve conduced two qualitative researches ? a text analysis and an image analysis ? and one quantitative analysis on our material.