Mastery and injury in West Point cadets during basic training

Abstract

The association of mastery to injury was examined prospectively in a sample of 500 men and 117 women cadets during the six week period of basic training at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Measures of mastery as well as other psychosocial instruments were administered at the outset of basic training to see if these covariates buffered or confounded the hypothesized relationship between mastery, stress and injury. Injury data were collected throughout the six weeks of basic training. Injuries were divided into subcategories (total, acute, chronic and non-traumatic) and were examined as dichotomous variables (none or one versus two or more). Mastery was found to be positively associated to multiple total injury (beta =.12, p =.004), and to multiple acute injuries (beta =.08, p =.05) in the whole sample. Mastery was also found to be positively and significantly related to multiple acute injuries in the women. Mastery was negatively associated to multiple non-traumatic injuries among the women only (beta ={dollar}-{dollar}.20, p =.04). Results support prior research which found that stressful life events are positively associated with multiple total injury. Mastery was found to moderate the recent negative life events-- multiple total injury relationship (beta =.17, p =.01). It was found that having high self-mastery moderates the recent stress-total injury relationship such that the relationship between injuries and recent events is stronger for those with higher mastery scores. It was also found that experiencing many recent stressful life events enhances the mastery-total injury relationship.