Domestic Violence in Sport: Complexities and Ethical Issues for Psychologists

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-213
Author(s):  
Ryan Sliwak ◽  
Sandra Lee ◽  
Noelany Pelc

The prevalence of domestic violence in the sports community continues to be a controversial topic of discussion. The conversation that surrounds domestic violence and athletes often occurs through a sports-only lens. Policies have been implemented by the various professional leagues, such as the Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Football League (NFL), to combat numerous incidents of domestic violence. Policies vary for each respective league. Discussion of domestic violence in sport has barely scratched the surface of identifying the complexity of the ethical dilemmas that psychologists may encounter. Three of these dilemmas are identified and discussed here: mandated treatment, confidentiality, and informed consent.

Sports ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Justine Jones ◽  
Kathryn Johnston ◽  
Lou Farah ◽  
Joseph Baker

In 2017, Sports Illustrated (SI) made headlines when their remarkable prediction from 2014 that the Houston Astros (a team in one of the lowest Major League Baseball divisional rankings) would win the World Series, came true. The less-publicised story was that in 2017, SI predicted the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the Major League Baseball (MLB) title. Assessing the forecasting accuracy of experts is critical as it explores the difficulty and limitations of forecasts and can help illuminate how predictions may shape sociocultural notions of sport in society. To thoroughly investigate SI’s forecasting record, predictions were collected from the four major North American sporting leagues (the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League) over the last 30 years (1988–2018). Kruskal–Wallis H Tests and Mann–Whitney U Tests were used to evaluate the absolute and relative accuracy of predictions. Results indicated that SI had the greatest predictive accuracy in the National Basketball Association and was significantly more likely to predict divisional winners compared to conference and league champions. Future work in this area may seek to examine multiple media outlets to gain a more comprehensive perspective on forecasting accuracy in sport.


2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Schempp ◽  
Bryan A. McCullick ◽  
Matthew A. Grant ◽  
Cornell Foo ◽  
Kelly Wieser

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between coaches’ professional playing experience and their professional coaching success. The sample (n = 134) included coaches who had the equivalent of three full seasons of head coaching experience in either Major League Baseball (MLB) (n = 46), the National Basketball Association (NBA) (n = 38) or the National Football League (NFL) (n = 50) as determined by the total number of games coached between the years 1997-2007. ANOVAs revealed no significant differences between coaches with more or less professional playing experience and professional coaching success as determined by professional winning percentage. Further, no significant relationship was found between professional playing experience and professional coaching success in MLB (r = -0.16), NBA (r = -0.05) or NFL (r = 0.00). It was concluded that professional playing experience was not a predictor of professional level coaching success. These findings support the notion that sources of knowledge other than playing experience may be necessary and useful in developing coaching expertise.


Author(s):  
Anna Magdalena Elsner

Ethical issues arising in the practice of psychotherapy, such as confidentiality, boundaries in the therapeutic relationship, and informed consent, figure prominently in a range of twentieth-century literary texts that portray psychotherapy. This chapter analyzes the portrayal of these conflicts, but also stresses that they are often marginal to the overall plot structures of these narratives and that literary depictions of psychotherapy are often vague or even inaccurate concerning key characteristics of psychotherapeutic practice. Focusing on examples that either illustrate professionalism and the absence of ethical challenges in psychotherapy, or take up the ethical reservations that fueled anti-Freudianism or the anti-psychiatry movement, the chapter proposes that selected literary depictions of psychotherapy can play a key role in sensitizing therapists to the complex make-up of ethical dilemmas as well as illustrating the cultural and historical contexts of these dilemmas.


Author(s):  
Kevin Snyder ◽  
Michael Lopez

AbstractPrior studies of referee behavior focus on identifying a bias in when certain calls are made [Kovash, Kenneth, & Levitt, Steven (2009). “Professionals do not play minimax: evidence from Major League Baseball and the National Football League (No. w15347).” National Bureau of Economic Research; Rosen, Peter A. and Rick L. Wilson. 2007. “An Analysis of the Defense First Strategy in College Football Overtime Games.”


2014 ◽  
pp. 711-730
Author(s):  
Jimmy Sanderson

This chapter explores how rookie athletes in Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and National Hockey League (NHL), used Twitter as an identity expression tool. A representative sample of tweets from athletes selected in the first round of the 2011 amateur draft of each sports league was selected for analysis. Results revealed that identity manifested in the following ways: (a) Athletes as dedicated workers; (b) Athletes as pop culture consumers; (c) Athletes as sports fans; (d) Athletes as motivators; (e) Athletes as information seekers; and (f) Athletes as everyday people. Through social media, athletes can more actively and diversely assert their identity. This action fosters identification, liking, and parasocial interaction with fans as athletes appear more approachable and similar. The ability to construct and disseminate a variety of identities holds important implications for athletes, which are discussed in the concluding section of the chapter.


Author(s):  
David George Surdam

This chapter examines the issues surrounding player draft in professional sports leagues. During the postwar era, baseball officials and players often mentioned free agents. Unlike the free agents of our era, however, these players were talented amateur players. Indeed, high school and college players constituted the remaining vestige of a free market for baseball labor during the postwar era. The owners quickly discovered that this free market for labor was costly and made attempts to curb spending on amateur players, sparking allegations of cheating that led to distrust among them. This chapter first considers the creation of the amateur draft in Major League Baseball (MLB) before discussing the reverse-order draft in the National Football League (NFL) and the player draft in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It concludes with an assessment of the impact of the draft on owners and players.


2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Landau

This article reviews ethical issues and dilemmas that arise from the dual roles of the social work researcher: as scientist and as someone who cares for individuals and groups in distress while exercising social control. There is a fair amount of tension between the roles of social worker and social work researcher due to a lack of clear boundaries of the researcher's function. The ethical dilemmas may vary with the framework in which the research is conducted, the participants, and social work researchers themselves. The current article focuses on issues of informed consent, expectations, and anxieties of the research participants, and ethical dilemmas. It ends with suggestions for ethical social work research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Holden

In 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Contained within the finance and banking statute designed to curb the ability of gambling websites to process payments was an exemption for certain forms of fantasy sports games. The so-called fantasy sports exemption was widely misperceived as a blanket exemption legalizing all compliant fantasy sports games, this proved to be false as various state attorney generals, beginning in 2015, began to examine whether daily fantasy sports games were compliant with state gambling laws. This brought renewed focus to the statute, which was often credited with inspiring the daily fantasy sports boom. This paper examines the origins of the inclusion of the fantasy sports exemption in proposed statutes pre-dating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and examines the archival materials associated with Senator Richard Bryan, who introduced the fantasy sports exemption, and proposes that the fantasy sports amendment may have been included to broach First Amendment concerns rather than to appease the interests of the National Football League or Major League Baseball, as has been suggested previously.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Øye ◽  
Nelli Øvre Sørensen ◽  
Stinne Glasdam

Background: The increase in medical ethical regulations and bureaucracy handled by institutional review boards and healthcare institutions puts the researchers using qualitative methods in a challenging position. Method: Based on three different cases from three different research studies, the article explores and discusses research ethical dilemmas. Objectives and ethical considerations: First, and especially, the article addresses the challenges for gatekeepers who influence the informant’s decisions to participate in research. Second, the article addresses the challenges in following research ethical guidelines related to informed consent and doing no harm. Third, the article argues for the importance of having research ethical guidelines and review boards to question and discuss the possible ethical dilemmas that occur in qualitative research. Discussion and conclusion: Research ethics must be understood in qualitative research as relational, situational, and emerging. That is, that focus on ethical issues and dilemmas has to be paid attention on the spot and not only at the desktop.


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