NASPSPA - North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity

North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity.

2016 Conference

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The NASPSPA 2016 CONFERENCE
was held at the Hotel Bonaventure
June 15-18, 2016 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Important Documents:

NASPSPA ProgramDOWNLOAD
NASPSPA Program GridDOWNLOAD
NASPSPA Poster Specifications*DOWNLOAD
NASPSPA Abstract SupplementDOWNLOAD

2016 Conference Workshops:

Pre-conference event – Sport Expertise
Seeing the forest and the trees: Theoretical and practical issues in sport expertise

DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM
Please join us for this exciting event which brings together researchers and practitioners from around the globe (Australia, Iceland, The Netherlands, UK, USA, Germany and Canada) exploring sport expertise and applied skill acquisition. There will be 3 sessions with a total of 15 individual talks in addition to a keynote presentation.

To be held at The Salon Montréal (the top floor of the leaning tower overlooking the Olympic Stadium in the Olympic Parc with fantastic views of the city,http://parcolympique.qc.ca/en/how-to-get-here/ ), in partnership with the INS (Institut National du Sport du Québec) and NASPSPA.

Guest keynote presentation — Professor Jocelyn Faubert (Essilor – NSERC Chair, Université de Montréal); who will be presenting his much publicized work on perceptual-cognitive skills training in sport “Understanding the role of perceptual-cognitive capacities in elite athletes: Experiences with the NeuroTracker approach” (http://vision.opto.umontreal.ca/english/index_en.html).

Registration and space is limited, so we request that you contact either Joe Baker (bakerj@yorku.ca) or Nikki Hodges (nicola.hodges@ubc.ca) in advance of the event if at this point you have not already registered. Online registration is now closed.

 

Exercise-Is-Medicine meets Evidence-Based-Medicine:
Learning to critically appraise Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in the time of bias

Panteleimon Ekkekakis, Ph.D., FACSM

RATIONALE: In several countries, exercise and physical activity are now included in clinical practice guidelines for the prevention and treatment of a wide range of diseases and types of disability. Indeed, the goal of the global Exercise-is-Medicine initiative is to further promote the implementation of exercise and physical activity in clinical practice. What is perhaps not yet fully appreciated is that the push to introduce a non-commercial option could force a redistribution of market shares, with substantial economic ramifications for the commercial entities benefiting from current options. Because clinical practice guidelines are developed following the model of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), these economic factors may directly impact the quality and integrity of clinical research. This pre-conference workshop will introduce attendees to some of the common mechanisms by which bias can influence the research process. The focus will be on depression, the leading cause of disability in high-income countries and one of the costliest disorders in the world. The interactive presentation will be based on several examples of published RCTs examining the effects of exercise on depression. The scope will cover participant inclusion/exclusion criteria, statistical power calculations, experimental designs, intervention development, treatment cross-contamination, outcome measurement, statistical analysis, data interpretation, and public dissemination.

TARGET AUDIENCE: The workshop is designed primarily for postgraduate students (Master’s and Ph.D. level) but will also be appropriate for researchers interested in further developing their critical appraisal skills. The workshop is not intended as an accelerated course in research methods or statistics. Therefore, knowledge of basic research concepts (e.g., internal and external validity, statistical power, errors of inference, measurement error) is assumed.

LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the conclusion of the workshop, the participants will achieve the following learning objectives: (1) develop an appreciation for the prevalence of bias in contemporary clinical research, (2) understand the influence of social, economic, and political circumstances on the research process, and (3) sharpen their skills for evaluating research conclusions by learning to focus on aspects of research methodology that typically exhibit high susceptibility to bias.

OUTLINE:  The following is an illustrative list of topics that will be addressed.

  1. Ioannidis (2005): “Most published research findings are false”
  2. If “Exercise is Medicine”, what does this mean for medicines?
  3. Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)
  4. Critical appraisal as the weakest link of EBM
  5. Gaming statistical power
  6. Conclusions that a design can support and conclusions it cannot
  7. Measurement of Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs)
  8. Comparing the analytic plan in the study protocol and the analyses in the final report