INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

sport, stress-related depression after losing, self-esteem stability, etc.)
outlook is developed if they are educated in how to maintain
commitment to both roles. Such practical methods as time and stress
management education, identifying social support networks, and
something as simple as integrating student-athletes into non-athletic
halls, are all ways to encourage this 2 . Above all, when life identities
are seen as intrinsically linked to ones personal development, positive
outcomes occur in each domain. As Serpa and Rodrigues (2001)
comment,
It is possible to make sports and academic activities
complementary in using what is acquired from each one of the
domains to better adapt to the other and, therefore, to life
because both are meaningful in a perspective of personal
development and not simply making acquisitions devoid of
existential content (p. 118).
Thus the sports psychological research area of ‘transferable skills’
seems to be important for answering our question of how sports
participation actually facilitates personal development. However, the
area is young, representing the recent shift in sport psychology
research away from performance enhancement towards personal
development (Miller and Kerr, 2002). For example, Mayocchi and
Hanrahan (2000), in their recent book chapter on ‘Transferable Skills
for Career Change’ recommend a number of questions that researchers
may wish to examine. These include:
• When and how do athletes develop the skills regarded as
transferable?
• How do individual characteristics and work-environment
characteristics affect skill transfer? That is, what is the nature
of the relationship?
• For athletes who engage in a second non-athletic career while
they are still pursuing their sporting career, what is the
potential for skills learned at work to be transferred back to the
sport setting?
Therefore, to clarify the ‘personal ideals’ Olympic research
agenda more clearly, we can ask the sport psychology question of how
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