About a year ago I started a thread asking people to participate in my study.
This was the thread in case anyone wanted to see: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3071350;search_string=;#3071350
This study was the capstone project for the honors program my senior year in college. I think I mentioned in that thread that I would post the entire study once I had it completed, so I just wanted to follow through in case anyone wants to read it.
Here’s the link: http://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/honors_appliedpsychology/3/ click the “download” button on the right.
If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here’s the abstract, but if this is something that interests you I would recommend you read the whole thing as the abstract obviously leaves out a lot of information.
Relationships Among Heart Rate Monitor Usage, Neuroticism, and Performance in Triathletes
Abstract**Triathlon, a sport that consists of swimming, biking and running, is growing in popularity throughout the country and the world. There is a large percentage of athletes that rely on the use of a heart rate monitor to gauge effort, but there is also a group of athletes that do not use this technology. The purpose of this research was to determine if personality, specifically neuroticism, played a role in determining which athletes use heart rate monitors and whether these variables had any effect on performance. Ninety-eight triathletes were surveyed from 2 half iron distance triathlons in the summer of 2010. There proved to be no interaction effect between neuroticism and heart rate monitor usage on performance . Interestingly, the data showed that there was no significant relationship between heart rate monitor usage and performance. This finding is interesting because heart rate monitors are widely used in the triathlon community, and these data show that perhaps heart rate monitors are not the best tool for gauging effort.
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Nothing incredibly conclusive was found in the study, but there were still some interesting findings. This is obviously a very difficult (and sometimes controversial) topic to study, and I acknowledged all of these problems and limitations in the discussion.
Thanks to everyone who participated and helped me out along the way, it was a long journey. If you have any questions please let me know.