Congratulations to Grace Tidmarsh who placed equal 5th in the highly competitive Young Investigator Award Oral Presentation competition at the European College of Sport Science (ECSS) Congress in Prague this past July.
Grace presented a paper from her PhD work entitled "A mixed methods fidelity assessment of a mental skills training programme for disadvantaged youth". This study is the first of its kind to evaluate a mental skills training programme (My Strengths Training for Life) that has been adapted for delivery to homeless young people.
Grace used a combination of observations by trained researchers and self-reflections completed by the programme facilitators to demonstrate that MST4Life is being delivered as intended.
Her research is contributing to growing evidence in support of MST4Life, enabling real-time improvements to the delivery of the programme, as well as identifying barriers and enablers of delivering a sports psychology based programme in a complex community setting.
Grace's PhD work, which was been funded by an ESRC Collaborative Studentship with St Basils, will also focus more broadly on process evaluations within positive youth development programmes for disadvantaged youth for improving mental health and physical activity.