The Cornerstone Committee reviewed several high-quality submissions for the 2018 Dissertation Award. The 2018 Dissertation Award winner is Daniel J. Brown, PhD, for his dissertation entitled “Human Thriving: A Conceptualization, Understanding, and Application to Sport.” Brown completed his doctoral studies at the University of Bath under the supervision of Rachel Arnold, PhD. He earned his BSc (Hons) in psychology from the University of Bath, UK, and his MSc in psychology of sport and exercise from Loughborough University, UK. He worked for the British Paralympic Association at the London 2012 Paralympic Games. He is currently on the faculty of the University of Portsmouth, UK, as a lecturer in sport and performance psychology.
Dissertation Synopsis
Sport performers encounter various stressors as part of their involvement in competitive sport, and their ability to respond effectively to these demands is likely to dictate whether they thrive, manage or succumb in competition. The purpose of this program of research was to provide the first systematic exploration of thriving in sport. To achieve this, thriving literature was first reviewed and a conceptualization of human thriving proposed. Specifically, thriving was suggested to be the joint experience of development and success, which can be realized through effective holistic functioning and observed through the experience of a high level of well-being and a perceived high level of performance. To substantiate the proposed conceptualization in sport, four empirical studies (N = 779) were then conducted which examined and compared the experiences of sport performers who thrived in competitive encounters to those who did not.
Across the four studies, cross-sectional, longitudinal and exploratory sequential mixed-method designs were employed, and data were collected (e.g., self-report questionnaires, physiological biomarkers, semi-structured interviews) and analyzed (e.g., factor mixture analysis, latent growth curve modelling, applied thematic analysis) via a variety of methods. The collective findings from the research make a contribution to knowledge on, and the promotion of, human thriving by:
- Developing and supporting a conceptualization of thriving that can unify work in this area.
- Demonstrating that subjective performance and well-being variables enable the rigorous classification of sport performers to thriving and non-thriving profiles.
- Identifying the enabler (e.g., personal resilient qualities) and process (e.g., basic psychological needs satisfaction) variables that enhance performer functioning and predict in-match thriving.
- Conducting the first sport-based examinations of physical thriving and the cumulative effect of thriving over time.