Construction of the integrated model for practical career support to the professional athletes

Recently, along with the enhancement of the argument for career of athletes, many researchers who major in sports psychology focus mainly on athletic retirement, a coordination of transitions in sport or and outside sport, social support and professional assistance in career transition, in the context of the second career concerning to professional athletes in Japan. However, when it comes to career transition of professional athletes, it is necessary to consider "career" from the whole perspectives of human life. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to clarify the career transition of professional athletes by the way of questionnaire and interview survey, which is approached from the view point of industrial/organizational psychology. For this purpose, we implemented the interview survey to professional athletes in 2008. In addition, we carried out the investigation to professional football players (interview survey: 5 players, questionnaire survey: 102 players) in 2009. Consequently, three following findings were led in conclusion. (1)Career intervention to professional athletes should be performed before the turning point of the career (career transition). (2)It is important to assess the career intervention to professional athletes. (3)It is an important stance to watch the processes when professional athletes open up one's career by oneself.     

Contrasting effects of urbanization on arboreal and ground-dwelling land snails: role of trophic interactions and habitat fragmentation

Urbanization generally reduces wildlife populations. Individual species responses, however, are often highly variable, and such variability can be explained by differences in species ecological traits. To examine this hypothesis, we focused on two co-occurring land snails, Ezohelix gainesi and Euhadra brandtii sapporo; the former is ground-dwelling and the latter is arboreal. We first estimated their population densities at nine sites distributed along an urbanization gradient: three were located in continuous natural forests, three at the edge of natural forests, and the rest in small isolated forests in urban areas. As a result, the ground-dwelling E. gainesi occurred at highest density in urban forests, followed by forest edges and continuous forests. By contrast, the arboreal E. b. sapporo occurred at highest density in continuous forests, but declined in forest edges and urban forests. We then conducted manipulative field experiments to quantify changes in predation pressure on these species. Ground-tethered E. gainesi and E. b. sapporo were repeatedly predated upon by forest-living mammals in continuous forests, but their survival rates increased in forest edges and urban forests. By contrast, canopy-tethered E. b. sapporo maintained high survival rates in all three forest types. The results indicate that a lack of mammalian predators enables ground-dwelling species to occur at high densities in urban forests, whereas the arboreal species was not affected by this predator relaxation effect. The combination of species-specific behavioural traits and changes in predator communities across an urbanization gradient has important effects on the biodiversity of urban ecosystems.

     

Using a pregnancy decision support program for women choosing birth after a previous caesarean in Japan: A mixed methods study

Background

Opportunities for women and providers to use decision aids and share decisions about birth after caesarean in practice are currently limited in Japan. This is despite known benefits of decision aids to support value-sensitive healthcare decisions.

Correction to: contrasting effects of urbanization on arboreal and ground-dwelling land snails: role of trophic interactions and habitat fragmentation

Urban Ecosystems - The original version of the article unfortunately contained mistakes in the legends of Fig. 3. The legends (1) Blue square: Euhadra brandtii sapporo, ground is changed...     

Relationship between collective efficacy and contextual performance among university athletes in Japan

The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between collective efficacy and contextual performance among university athletes in Japan. We carried out 305 university athletes (201 males, 104 females) from 14 teams in various geographic areas in Japan. The average age of the participants was 19.91 years (SD = 1.01). The kinds of sports were soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and so on. Then, using Collective Efficacy Questionnaire for Sports (CEQS; Sandra E. Short et al., 2005) and Contextual Performance Scale (Ikeda, and Furukawa, 2008), we examined the relationship between collective efficacy and Contextual performance. In conclusion, this study provided the following three remarks. 1) There are relationship between collective efficacy and contextual performance. 2) Contextual performance execution level improve collective efficacy. 3) It is important to always recommend contextual performance in own team to strengthen the collective efficacy more.