Adventurous sporting experience as a predictor of resilient behaviour when exposed to a coldwater environment.

Objective: The purpose of the current study was to retrospectively look at the influence of previous participation in adventurous sports and how it can be used to predict resilient – assessed using two psychometric measures – behaviour in a cold-water stressor. Method: Twelve undergraduate University of Chichester students (20.7±1.15 years) voluntarily took part in the study. All participants answered three psychometric measures – two for resilience assessment and one of sporting participation. Then all participants completed the cold pressor test whilst time completed, toe temperature and heart-rate were measured. During the test and immediately on completion, the researcher also asked the participants to rate the and pain & intensity of the experience on a scale of 1 – 10. Results: The results of the study indicated that participation in adventure sports at a high level of intensity correlates with increased levels of resilience. Although statistical analysis indicated some tendencies towards significance in the heartrate change against the resilience measures, as well significant relationships within the data; further analysis showed no physiological measures were related to the psychometric measures of resilience. Discussion and conclusion: The study concluded that whilst it appears that high intensity participation in adventure sports is related to increased levels of resilience, the way in which the CPT was conducted, meant that it provided no predictive influence on testing the resilience present in each of the participants. Sample size and the population used as well as not being able to use heart-rate variability were identified as limitations of the study. Due to the fact that resilience currently lacks a distinct working definition, further research should work to identify one in order to allow research to be able to better establish what affects it and how