Perceived social support from strength coaches among injured student-athletes

The purpose of this study was to assess the level of perceived social support reported among student-athletes from their strength coach (SC) during the later reconditioning stage of rehabilitation. Data from (n = 82) participants were utilized in this study from 6 Division I Universities in the Midwest region of the United States. Each participant reported being injured for a minimum of 5 consecutive days or more. Participants were administered a survey packet consisting of; 1 demographic form, 2 consent forms, and 3 social support survey forms consisting of 6 types of social support measured on a 5 point Likert scale. The 6 types of social support assessed included; listening support, task appreciation, task challenge, emotional support, emotional challenge, and reality confirmation.AChi-Square Test was employed to assess the injured student-athlete's level of perceived social support received from their SC's during the later reconditioning stage of rehabilitation. Results showed that SC's have a significant psychosocial impact on a student-athletes overall psychological well-being during reconditioning. In conjunctionwith similar research, listening support, task appreciation, task challenge, and reality confirmation showed to be reported most frequent among student-athletes as needed or expected and most salient for their overall mental well-being during reconditioning.Among genders both male and female participants reported expecting and/or needing task challenge and reality confirmation from their SC's in addition, both male and female participants also reported task challenge and reality confirmation as the types of social support received from their SC's that was most important for their overall psychological well-being during the later reconditioning stage of rehabilitation. Furthermore, emotional challenge was reported the least overall among participants and among genders.This study provided sufficient evidence of the important psychosocial role that SC's can play during the later reconditioning stage of rehabilitation to injured student-athletes. Furthermore, the results of this study support other similar studies which also assessed the psychological impact of social support provided by the athletic trainer (AT) which was reported among student-athletes during rehabilitation.