An Honorable Research Project
A personal experience inspires research and leads to a valuable learning opportunity.
By Zachary Arcona ‘17
My honors project, Exploring Predictors of the Mental Readiness and Recovery from Injury, is personal. I came to Moravian University as a student-athlete--a basketball player, and in my first varsity game, I broke my arm doing a layup. For an athlete, nothing is worse than sitting on the sideline and watching practices and games day in and day out, being unable to play. My recovery consisted of three months of no physical exercise, followed by two months of rehab. When, finally, I returned to play, I couldn’t make a simple layup, which I’d done thousands of times before. I wondered if the fear that I would break my arm again in the same way was inhibiting my performance, and that question drove me to explore the psychology of returning to sport after injury.
During my junior year, I interned with John Heil, DA, CC-AASP, then-president of the American Psychological Association Division 47 (Society for Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology), whose area of expertise is sports injury and recovery. While working with him, my interest in the topic grew substantially, and I began to understand how my experience was not uncommon among athletes. In addition to my work with Heil, I participated in an independent study with Robert Brill, associate professor of psychology, on current research in sport psychology, which brought me deeper into the topic for my honors project.
Exploring Predictors of the Mental Readiness and Recovery from Injury focuses on athletes who participate in traditional seasonal sports at Moravian University and who are coming back from injury. I defined an injured athlete as one who missed at least a week of play but for whom the injury was not season ending. The purpose of the research was to examine if there are correlations between four predictors of return to sport--pain, attribution of responsibility, re-injury anxiety, and social support--and an athlete's psychological readiness to return to sport. Each athlete underwent a two-part examination by the athletic trainers at Moravian. Significant correlations were found between an athlete’s readiness to return and internal attribution of responsibility (negative), social support (both social integration and attachment) and re-injury anxiety (negative).
I had the opportunity to share my project in a poster presentation at Moravian University on March 3. It was a great first-time experience in presenting my work to other people of intellect and show off the hard work that I have done. In addition, I will present this research at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in April, using the format of a 20- to 30-minute oral presentation and again, as a poster, at the American Psychological Sciences Conference in May. The Moravian experience prepared me and taught me how to talk with people of different majors. Some of the technical terms that psychology majors, or people with a background in psychology, may know, others in a different field likely will not know. I had an opportunity to talk about my work with people who had background in Biology, English, and other fields and to explain my research in layman's terms. This ability is crucial to other world situations.
The entire process of working on an Honors Project and delivering it has prepared me incredibly for my life after Moravian University. I will be entering a graduate degree program next year that has a focus in research. Be being an Honors student and completing my individual research, I have become exponentially more prepared to succeed in the next stage of my life. Also, it taught me even more how to accept criticism and work with someone incredibly more intelligent than I am. Brill has never been easy on me but his push and toughness boosted my aptitude in a variety of areas. This form of toughness and passion from him made me better and helped me prepare for graduate school as well. In the end, my experience as an Honors Student at Moravian, conducting my own research. has prepared me for the next step in my life and the steps beyond that. It has been an amazing journey that I will finish soon and never forget.