Athletes’ expectations toward sport psychology consulting and barriers to sport psychologists in Iran

The aim of this study was to investigate athletes' expectations toward sport psychology in addition to barriers to sport psychologists practice. A total of 365 elite athletes attending different national teams and primer leagues were asked to complete expectations checklist and barriers questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were reported; furthermore association between expectations and independent variables analyzed by Qi-square and association between barriers and independent variables analyzed by analysis of variance. The result showed that 72.2% of participants preferred the individual counseling rather than other kinds such as group counseling to deal with psychologists. Seeing a sport psychology consultant, 33.5% had serious interest to talk about personal concerns while 58.9% were interested in talking about performance concerns. Furthermore, the most important barriers against sport psychologists were lack of sports knowledge in psychologists and lack of knowledge of sport psychology in athletes followed by lack of clarity in psychological services. Current study indicated that athletes had a preference for individual counseling and they believed that inadequate information among athletes and psychologists were the major barriers to progress of sport psychology in Iran.