Reactions to sport career termination: a cross-national comparison of German, Lithuanian, and Russian athletes

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Abstract

Objectives: To assess the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural consequences of sport career termination of national and international level athletes in three nations.

Design and methods: Athletes of Germany (n=88), Lithuania (n=65), and Russia (n=101) were asked to describe in retrospect their reactions to career termination. The Athletic Retirement Questionnaire developed by the first two authors and presented in three corresponding languages was used. Planning of retirement and national identity served as independent variables. Dependent variables were reasons and circumstances for career termination, participants’ emotional reactions, coping reactions, athletic identity during and after sport career, and adjustment to life after career termination.

Results: Analyses of variance revealed significant main effects of retirement planning and national identity on most dependent variables. Planning of retirement contributed to significantly better cognitive, emotional, and behavioural adaptation. In addition, high athletic identity contributed to less positive reactions to retirement and to more problems in the adaptation process. The emotional reactions of Russian and Lithuanian athletes were similar, but differed from the German athletes who, in general, showed more positive and lesser negative emotions after retirement. Though accepting the reality of retirement was the most often used coping strategy among all participants, Lithuanian athletes showed more denial and Russian athletes more distraction strategies after retirement than the other nations.

Discussion: The results are discussed with regard to athletes’ readiness for career transition in different social and cultural environments. Recommendations are given on how to help athletes to prepare for and to cope with career termination.

Introduction

Studies concerning the transition to post-sport career have mainly concentrated on the reasons for and the adjustment to career termination. The reasons for career termination are manifold (Boothby, Tungatt and Townsend, 1981, Bussmann and Alfermann, 1994, Koukouris, 1991, Ogilvie and Taylor, 1993), and seem to play a crucial role for adjustment to post-career life. This is especially true for the subjective feeling of freedom of choice (Alfermann, 2000, Coakley, 1983, Taylor and Ogilvie, 1994, Taylor and Ogilvie, 1998, Webb, Nasco, Riley and Headrick, 1998). Data obtained so far show quite clearly that an involuntary retirement may have complicating or even devastating consequences for the adjustment process shortly after career termination (e.g. Blinde and Stratta, 1992, Wheeler, Malone, VanVlack, Nelson and Steadward, 1996). This can be especially true if retirement is regarded as an ‘offtime’ life event due to externally determined causes (Blinde and Stratta, 1992, Pearson and Petitpas, 1990). A subjective feeling of control thus seems to facilitate the transition to post-career life. In addition, it may also contribute to differences in the quality of life.

In their overview of sport career termination research, Ogilvie and Taylor, 1993, Taylor and Ogilvie, 1994, Taylor and Ogilvie, 1998) emphasise four main causes of career termination: age, deselection, injury, and free choice. The first three causes underline that athletes are unable to continue competition due to performance decrements. Thus they seem to have no choice about withdrawal, being forced to do so. They have to leave due to circumstances that are out of their control. In addition, Ogilvie and Taylor mention free choice as a fourth category of causes. Webb et al. (1998) even dichotomise the causes of career termination “into two categories—retirements that are freely chosen and those that are forced by circumstances” (p. 341), out of the athletes’ control, like decreasing performance or injuries. The subjective feeling of control over events is a crucial part of social psychological theories of health and illness. In fact, the perception of control not only fosters mental health and a successful development (Seligman, 1991), but also is strongly correlated to heightened feelings of self-efficacy, which play a key role in behaviour change and adjustment (Bandura, 1997). So it can be postulated that free choice vs. forced retirement will influence adjustment to it.

The dichotomy of causes as suggested by Webb et al. (1998) needs further differentiation. Given that the feeling of control over career termination is crucial for emotional and coping reactions, we assessed not only the subjective feeling of voluntary or involuntary drawback from sport, but also if retirement had been planned or not. Thus the first objective of our study is concerned with the effects of planned vs. unplanned retirement. We hypothesise that planned retirement will lead to better emotional and behavioural adjustment to career termination. In addition, gender will be considered as a variable that might contribute to differences in the transition process, even though this has been rather neglected so far. Those studies that do make comparisons between male and female athletes actually find some minor differences in reasons for career termination and in post-career development (Alfermann, 2000, Hastings, Kurth and Meyer, 1989), but similarities are evident (Greendorfer & Blinde, 1985).

Besides the differential effects of planned vs. unplanned career termination, we are also interested in comparing the cross-national stability of reactions to career termination. Thus the cross-national comparison is the second objective of our study. Typically, studies were undertaken in Western Europe and North America, thus representing countries with a capitalist economy (for an overview, see Lavallee, Wylleman, & Sinclair, 2000). Career termination was a topic of research in socialist countries only rarely (see Svoboda & Vanek, 1982). One of the reasons could be that in socialism elite sport was glorified and possible negative side effects were withheld from the public. In the former Soviet Union, for example, “an emphasis was placed on athletes’ achievements and on positive examples and facts. The negative facts were either passed over in silence or were given as exceptions to the general rule” (Stambulova, 1994, p. 223). This changed only after Perestroika, when career transitions, including post-career, became a topic of research (e.g. Stambulova, 1994). But, so far, no comparative studies exist about how athletes from countries of former socialist and capitalist societies react to their career termination. We will present data from samples of Germany, Lithuania, and Russia. Lithuania and Russia were formerly united within the Soviet Union, and in those times had an identical system of elite sport support that gave athletes not only optimal training opportunities, but also social status, privileges, and financial security. Athletes were sure to find a job after their sport career. As sport was an important way to help the country gain greater international status, successful elite athletes also were rewarded with an extremely high reputation. After Perestroika, athletes were no longer supported in a way that made elite sport a secure life time investment. Instead, athletes had to make their own choices for post-career and had to find a job by themselves. In addition, elite sport lost its high reputation.

In Germany, the Eastern part of the country, the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), had a political and sport system that was comparable to that of the former Soviet Union. Unification between East and West Germany led to rapid changes so that at present all German athletes have conditions similar to the former West Germany. German athletes are advised to combine their sport and their professional career and to plan for a future after sport. German athletes can get public financial support for their sport career, depending on their performance, and with regard to their career plans after sport they get assistance by a professional consultant (Emrich, Altmeyer, & Papathanassiou, 1994). Though successful athletes tend to get high recognition, they do not necessarily profit economically from their investment in sport. No public support system is available for elite athletes after their sport career, and they are not privileged members of society. Instead, it is up to the athletes themselves to decide how and what they do after career termination.

Considering the tremendous political and economic changes in Lithuania and Russia, as well as in the former GDR, it seemed especially attractive to compare the reactions to athletic retirement of former elite athletes from these three countries. Our second set of hypotheses, therefore, is concerned with a comparison between the three nations. It is expected that 10 years after unification athletes from the Eastern and Western parts of Germany would no longer differ from each other with regard to the reasons for and the consequences of career termination. On the other hand, due to their common history, athletes from Lithuania and Russia should be relatively similar in their reactions to career termination. But due to differences in the political and sport systems they should differ from athletes from Germany. In particular, it is to be expected that athletes from these East European countries would feel more committed to sport, have a higher athletic identity (Hale, James, Stambulova, & Collins, 1999) and thus have more negative and less positive feelings about the end of their sport career. It is expected that they would need a longer time period for adaptation to post-career, and would need more active coping than the Germans.

As identity has been shown to be of additional importance for coping with retirement (Brewer, Van Raalte and Petitpas, 2000, Grove, Lavallee and Gordon, 1997), the third objective of our study is directed towards the consequences of athletic identity. In particular, it is hypothesised that athletic identity would correlate negatively with emotional satisfaction after and with adaptation to retirement.

Section snippets

Participants

The sample of participants was composed of 256 former amateur athletes.3 There were two criteria for including participants in the study: (a) participation in competitions at national–international level; (b) retirement from sport no longer than 10 years ago. The 43 male and 45 female German athletes participated in rowing, track and field, hockey, swimming, and ice skating; the 36 male and 29

Results

First, the data were analysed for gender differences on the dependent variables. Female athletes reported slightly lesser negative emotions after career termination (F(1,239)=4.36, p<0.05, η2=0.02) and a longer duration of adaptation to post-career life than male athletes (F(1,130)=4.07, p<0.05, η2=0.03). No other significant gender differences emerged. The significant effects are of only minor importance, as can be seen from the low η2 values, therefore the data were combined across genders

Discussion

All three sets of hypotheses were supported. In spite of some limitations of the study (different sports of the participants in different samples, some differences in the procedure of data collection), the results revealed both similarities and cross-cultural differences in athletic retirement and post-career adaptation of former athletes from Germany, Lithuania, and Russia. We will discuss these results in three ways. First, why there was no interaction effect of nationality and retirement

Applications and future directions for research

Former elite athletes might be seen as a good investment for society. They are young people who did a good job and succeeded in situations of social evaluation and competition. They are used to working hard and can be a good resource for a society in case of successful adaptation after sport career termination. Neglecting assistance to them is a waste of human resources.

Based on the results of this study, we can suggest psychological interventions aimed at helping athletes to keep subjective

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    1

    Present address: School of Social and Health Sciences, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden.

    2

    Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.

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