Prospective examination of social identity, mental toughness, and overuse injury, and initial validation of the Test of Intentions to Reduce Effort (TIRE)

Citation

Beasley V, Eklund R & Coffee P (2018) Prospective examination of social identity, mental toughness, and overuse injury, and initial validation of the Test of Intentions to Reduce Effort (TIRE). 2018 Conference of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA), 21.06.2018-23.06.2018.

Abstract
Based on social identity theory, the purposes of this study were: 1) assess support for hypothesized relationships between social identity constructs, mental toughness, and overuse injury severity, and 2) conduct initial validation of a measure of susceptibility to higher overuse injury severity, the Test of Intentions to Reduce Effort (TIRE). Participants were backpackers who attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail, a mountain trek over 2,000 miles. Before their attempts, participants (N = 283) completed online measures of social identification (i.e., Ingroup Identification; Leach et al., 2008), social identity content adapted to hiking (Barker et al., 2014), mental toughness (i.e., Mental Toughness Index; Gucciardi et al., 2015), and the TIRE. After their attempts, 170 of the participants completed measures; 136 reported overuse injury occurrence. Pre-hike scores of social identification and social identity content significantly correlated with overuse injury severity. A hierarchical moderation analysis revealed that mental toughness scores moderated the relationship between social identification scores and severity outcomes; those high in mental toughness and social identification reported higher severity than those high in mental toughness and low in social identification. Regarding the second purpose, exploratory factor analysis of TIRE scores revealed a two-factor model, consisting of intentions to reduce effort due to low-level overuse injury pain, and due to all overuse injury pain levels. TIRE scores exhibited construct and predictive validity. Additional research is needed to assess other psychometric properties of TIRE scores and to determine generalizability to other physical activity contexts. The findings have practical implications in identifying individuals with higher susceptibility to overuse injury severity and theoretical implications in providing evidence that social identity theory is applicable to the study of overuse injury. This initial effort may ultimately assist in reducing overuse injury occurrence and severity.