Passion and coping : relationships with burnout and goal attainment in collegiate athletes

The stress process in sport can lead to a number of negative outcomes for athletes, including burnout and a failure to attain desired goals in sport (Gaudreau & Blondin, 2002; Hoar et al., 2006). Athletes can manage stress by coping, which involves various thoughts and actions (Lazarus, 1999). A person-related variable that may influence coping is the passion that athletes have for sport. Vallerand and colleagues (2003) proposed the dualistic model of passion (DMP), which differentiates between two forms of passion: harmonious (HP) and obsessive (OP). This research examined the relationship between passion and coping in sport, and tested if coping mediated the relationship between types of passion and both burnout and goal attainment. College- and university-level volleyball players (N = 239; female n = 126) participated in a prospective observational study involving two time points approximately 3 months apart. Measures assessing passion, coping style, burnout, and goal attainment were administered using paper and online questionnaires. Results indicated that burnout at time 2 was negatively associated with task-oriented coping and positively associated with both distraction- and disengagement-oriented coping, while change in burnout between time 1 and time 2 was positively associated with change in distraction- and disengagement-oriented coping. Analyses with both prospective data and change scores indicated that goal attainment was positively associated with task-oriented coping and negatively associated with disengagement-oriented coping. HP was negatively associated with burnout and positively associated with goal attainment, and mediation analyses revealed that disengagement-oriented coping mediated the relationship between HP and burnout, while both task- and disengagement-oriented coping mediated the relationship between HP and goal attainment. Prospective analyses revealed that OP at time 1 was unrelated to both burnout and goal attainment at time 2, but these relationships were suppressed by disengagement-oriented coping. Change in OP was positively associated with change in burnout, and this relationship was mediated by disengagement-oriented coping. Overall, these results highlight the role of coping, particularly disengagement-oriented coping, in the relationship between types of passion and both burnout and goal attainment, and provide insight into the relationship between passion and the stress process in sport.Education, Faculty ofKinesiology, School ofGraduat