Dr Cory Middleton

Cory Middleton is a provisionally registered psychologist in ACT and provides psychological services to athletes at the ACT Academy of Sport. He also has a background in coaching elite athletes, with nine years experience coaching athletes at the ACT Academy of Sport. In 2002 he was awarded a highly prestigious Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) to pursue an investigation into the conceptualisation and measurement of mental toughness in athletes. This research forms the basis of his PhD, which was completed from his base at the Australian Institute of Sport (the industry partner). In addition to this project, Cory has experience working with chronic pain sufferers in private practice, providing treatment to improve resilience and the physical well-being of chronic pain sufferers. He is also a member of ResNet, a resilience network that brings together the people of Canberra with a commitment to fostering resilience in the ACT.

Qualifications

BA (Sports Science; Sports Coaching), BA (Psychology) (Canberra), PhD (UWS)

Thesis Title

Mental Toughness: Theory And Measurement

Abstract

Despite the apparent importance of mental toughness, limited research has been conducted on the topic.  In particular, there is a lack of mental toughness measures that have been evaluated in relation to even minimum levels of psychometric criteria— reliability, factor structure, and construct validity.  The aims for this research project are to clearly define and conceptualise mental toughness, build the most appropriate instrument for measuring mental toughness, and to establish good reliability, factor structure and construct validity for the instrument.  The first stage of this research was to evaluate the construct validity of responses to Loehr’s (1986) mental toughness test, the Psychological Performance Inventory (PPI) using a sample of 263 student-athletes from an elite sports high school. The research showed that the PPI and alternative versions of the PPI (based on exploratory factor analysis) were not sound measures of mental toughness, and indicates that a good fit is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for construct validation. Good instrumentation must be strong in terms of conceptual/theoretical considerations, psychometric properties, and relations to key correlates hypothesised to be meaningfully related to it.

Supervisors

Professor Herb Marsh & Dr Andrew Martin  

 

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