Injured Athletes' Rehabilitation Beliefs and Subjective Well-Being: The Contribution of Hope and Social Support

Context: Injuries are a significant problem in the world of sports. Hope and social support are very important features in providing psychological help as people face life challenges such as sport injuries. Objective: To examine how hope and social support uniquely and jointly predict postinjury rehabilitation beliefs, rehabilitation behavior, and subjective well-being. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Four sports-injury rehabilitation centers of local universities in Taiwan. Participants: A total of 224 injured Taiwanese collegiate student-athletes. Main Outcomes Measure(s): The Trait Hope Scale, the Sports Injury Rehabilitation Beliefs Survey, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Positive Affective and Negative Affective Scale, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support were completed by participants after they received their regular rehabilitation treatment. Results: We conducted hierarchical regressions and found that social support and 2 types of hope in injured athletes predicted their rehabilitation beliefs and subjective well-being. However, only hope agency predicted their rehabilitation behavior. Also, hope and social support had an interactive effect on the prediction of subjective well-being; for participants with low hope pathways, the perception of more social support was associated with higher levels of subjective well-being, whereas social support had only a relatively low association with subjective well-being among participants with high hope pathways. Conclusions: Enhancing hope perceptions and strengthening injured athletes' social support during rehabilitation are beneficial to rehabilitation behavior and subjective well-being.