The Cornerstone Committee reviewed several high-quality submissions for the 2019 Dissertation Award.
The 2019 Dissertation Award winner is Alexandra Thompson, PhD, for her dissertation entitled “Eating Disorder Diagnosis and the Female Athlete: From College Sport to Retirement,” completed under the supervision of Trent Petrie, PhD, at the University of North Texas (UNT).
Prior to attendance at UNT, Thompson graduated with a master’s degree in science in counseling from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2012, and received her Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Davidson College in 2010. She has worked at North Carolina State University since 2016, beginning in the counseling center and transitioning to the athletic department in August of 2018. She is currently a sport psychology post-doctoral fellow, primarily responsible for providing psychological services to the athletic department, with a weekly eight-hour rotation at the counseling center in which she provides counseling services to students struggling with disordered eating. She is a former Division I scholar-athlete who played basketball at Davidson College, where she developed her passion for researching and developing prevention and intervention methods for student-athletes struggling with disordered eating. Thompson’s research background centers on prevalence and predictors of disordered eating in active and retired NCAA female collegiate athletes.
Dissertation Synopsis
Thompson’s dissertation was a longitudinal survey of 193 retired NCAA Division I swimmers, divers and gymnasts from 26 programs when they were active competitors (Time 1, in 2009) and when they were retired from collegiate sport (Time 2, in 2015). Data collection included an assessment of eating disorder symptomatology, body satisfaction, mood, internalization of ideal body types, intention to diet, and perceived pressures regarding body shape. Those who endorsed disordered eating, at either the clinical or subclinical levels, increased significantly over time (i.e., 25.4 percent at Time 1; 30.1 percent at Time 2), with subclinical levels increasing the most. Of those who were subclinical or who reported no symptoms at Time 1, 52.3 percent and 22.9 percent, respectively, maintained and/or developed some level of disordered eating by Time 2. Regardless of athletic participation status, the women consistently endorsed using exercise and dieting/fasting as the most frequent form of weight control, but to a much lesser degree when retired.
A logistic regression model was also run to examine psychosocial predictors of future disordered eating (i.e., clinical and/or subclinical combined). For athletes with disordered eating symptomatology at Time 1, the full prediction model explained 14.1 percent to 21.1 percent of the variance in disordered eating categories, and correctly classified 73.6 percent of the athletes in the sample. In particular, body dissatisfaction and pressure to exercise significantly predicted their being classified in the disordered eating group.
These findings suggest that a substantial portion of retired athletes report symptoms at the subclinical level. Thus, early intervention efforts that help student-athletes develop body acceptance and healthy relationships with exercise is warranted. Pre-retirement educational programming that targets healthy transitions and positive coping in retirement will also likely benefit female student-athletes.