Associate Professor Stephanie Hanrahan
BA(Santa Barbara, Calif), MSc(Illinois), PhD(UWA)
- Associate Professor in Sport and Exercise Psychology
- Chair, School Teaching & Learning Committee
- Co-ordinator, programs in Sport & Exercise Psychology
Contact details
Rm 504
Phone: (+61) 7 3365 6453
Fax: (+61) 7 3365 6877
E-mail: steph@hms.uq.edu.au
Background
Stephanie Hanrahan completed her PhD at The University of Western Australia in the area of attributional style in sport. After a short stint at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Dr Hanrahan joined the academic staff at The University of Queensland as a lecturer in 1990. She was a UQ Teaching Excellence Award winner in 1997 and is currently an associate professor holding a joint appointment with the Schools of Human Movement Studies and Psychology.
Research Interests
Research in achievement motivation exploring attributional styles, achievement goal orientations, expectancy of success, and performance is one of Dr Hanrahan's primary areas of research. Research projects with a colleague from the University of Canberra include one investigating the impact of context and achievement goal orientations on attributions. Recent collaboration with a researcher in the area of management as well as industry partners and support from an ARC-SPIRT grant has expanded this research to the work environment. Work-related versions of the assessment instruments used in sport have been devised and revised to be psychometrically sound. Recent work from this grant has found that attributional style for positive events is related to athlete and coach rated performance as well as coach-rated persistence. Task orientation has also been found to be related to persistence. An intervention package based on the results of this study has been designed to enhance motivation and performance. Preliminary results indicate that the intervention influenced attributions and task orientation in the expected direction.
Dr Hanrahan's second area of research is mental skills training. Although she does a lot of work with able-bodied athletes, her research tends to focus on less studied populations (e.g., athletes with disabilities and performing artists). In 2005 she instigated a research project that is finding that a psychological skills training program based on sport psychology techniques increases the global self-concept and perceived life satisfaction in Mexican orphans.
A third research theme relates to assessing innovative teaching methods. Dr Hanrahan is involved in assessing peer- and self-assessment, the use of writing partnerships by students, and the impact of giving students the opportunity to choose the weightings of their exams.
Publications and Research Projects
For a full list of Dr Hanrahan's publications (prior to 2007) and current and past research projects, please refer to the UQreSEARCHers website.
Hanrahan, S.J. (2007). Athletes with disabilities. In G. Tenenbaum & R.C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (3rd ed., pp. 845-858). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Research Students
Further details on theses topics can be found on the UQreSEARCHers website.
Doctor of Philosophy (Principal)
- Greg Evans
- John Baranoff
- Rosie Sanimirovic