Prediction of life stress on athletes' burnout: the dual role of perceived stress

Abstract

Although many studies adopted Smith's (1986) cognitive-affective model of athletic burnout in examining stress-burnout relationship, very few studies examined the mediating/moderating role of perceived stress on the stress-burnout relationship. We sampled 195 college student-athletes and assessed their life stress, perceived stress, and burnout. Correlation analyses found all study variables correlated. Two separate hierarchical regression analyses found that the "distress" component of perceived stress mediated athletes' two types of life stress-burnout relationship but "counter-stress" component of perceived stress-moderated athletes' general-life stress-burnout relationship. We concluded that interweaving relationships among athletes' life stress, perceived stress, and burnout are not straightforward. Future research should consider the nature of athletes life stress, and dual role of perceived stress in examining its' association with related psychological responses in athletic settings.

Keywords: Competitive sports; Psychological distress; Well-being; Youth athletes.

Figure 1. The relationship between two types of life stress and burnout moderated by counter stress.

For participants with high counter stress (light line), burnout was significantly lower than participants with low counter stress in general-life stress condition but not in sport-specific life stress condition; LS-G, general-life stress; LS-S, sport-specific life stress.