Injury rehabilitation: a qualitative follow-up study

The current qualitative follow-up study was conducted to enhance the interpretability and meaningfulness of the findings emerging from a 5-week goal-setting intervention study with injured athletes. Semistructured interviews were conducted with a sample of 9 injured athletes, 3 from each of the three intervention study groups (goal-setting, social support control, and control), and cross-case summaries were inductively derived. The study highlighted the importance of individual difference variables, and the interaction of person and situational variables, including support from coaches and club, inability to train, weight gain, slowness of progress, physiotherapist support, and the importance of long-term outcome goals. Possible mechanisms for the observed effects of the goal-setting intervention included the effects of goal-setting on self-efficacy, attributions, perceptions of control, and attention.