www.sportingbounce.com - Sporting Bounce
Posted 10/17/2020 in Category 1

Just Another Manic Monday? Enquiries and Working Practices in Sport Psychology Consultancy

Just Another Manic Monday? Enquiries and Working Practices in Sport Psychology Consultancy


At Sporting Bounce we aim to connect sport psychologists, and other sport performance specialists with clients. To do this we work hard to rank highly on organic searches for sport psychology related terms and we invest heavily in Google Adwords to drive traffic to the site and our consultants. Now – you probably know all of that - on to the point of this article. One of the things we have noticed is that our spend on Adwords is greater, traffic is substantially higher, and enquiries greater, early on in the week. We have consistently observed this in our 18 months as a directory. 


Now, there are many likely reasons for this, but one possible explanation is how our emotional state changes over the week. A widely reported data-set from Facebook analysis of the affective information in the posts of high school, tertiary students, and young Australians and New Zealanders does point to one possible reason why this may be the case. Now there are clearly ethical issues involved in accessing, and interpreting, the data and indeed we first came across this while reading and discussing Shoshana Zuboff’s excellent book ‘The age of Surveillance Capitalism’. What was reported was anticipatory emotions are more likely to be expressed early in the week while reflective emotions increase later on in the week and on the weekend. So Monday to Thursday is about building confidence. People may be thinking about an upcoming competition, and be aware of how they might be feeling, and taking steps to plan for that. Is that the time that most people take the leap to speak with a sport psychology consultant? Is that the time most people contact you? Certainly our data support that. In contrast the weekend is for broadcasting achievements according to Facebook, and in this state people are perhaps less likely to reach out to make contact with a consultant. 


Of course, in terms of our profession, as sport psychology consultants most competitions happen at the weekend and so this pattern is not surprising. There may be simple practical reasons for the pattern we observe. If you compete on the weekend it makes sense to access support earlier in the week. Further, we have not had sight of the data so it may simply be a small statistical trend. Also, while this reflects initial contacts – reaching out for help – it may not reflect help seeking behaviour in already formed relationships. When a consulting relationship is formed perhaps contacts are made more evenly throughout the week. 


So what does this mean? Well it could have an impact on how you think about advertising your consultancy and the best days to do that. It may also mean expecting, and planning for, more initial contacts earlier in the week. It may of course also reflect a small statistical trend in the data that does not translate to any meaningful practical or observable differences in the working week of a sport psychologist. But we thought it was an interesting observation worth noting. It also enables us to reference one of our favourite bands, the Bangles. We were very close to referencing the Happy Mondays, and also the Blue Monday song by New Order but on this occasion the Bangles won out. 


Image by Firmbee from Pixabay