Thomas D. Raedeke and Alan L. Smith met in 1993 at the University of Oregon, where they shared an office as graduate students in the Department of Exercise and Movement Science. Their mutual interests in motivational processes in sport led to their later collaboration on the development of the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ), which built from Raedeke’s doctoral dissertation research on commitment and burnout in adolescent swimmers. That work received the 1995 National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) Sport Psychology Academy and 1996 Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology dissertation awards. Raedeke and Smith’s collaboration on athlete burnout research and the development of the ABQ began in their early assistant professor years. Currently they are associate professors at East Carolina University and Purdue University, respectively, and continue their collaborative activity. Most recently, they co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Sport Psychology on athlete burnout (Smith, Lemyre, & Raedeke, 2007).

Raedeke and Smith both have served as chair of the NASPE Sport and Exercise Psychology Academy, serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, and are certified consultants through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). Beyond their shared professional backgrounds, Raedeke is currently chair of the AASP Health and Exercise Psychology committee and recently co-authored a text titled Sport Psychology for Coaches. His work on burnout stems from a broader interest in affective experiences and motivational processes as they relate to promoting positive sport and exercise experiences that foster continued involvement and psychological well-being. Smith is an associate editor of the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology and a consulting editor of Child Development. He is widely recognized for his work on peer relationships in sport and physical activity contexts and, in addition to co-developing the ABQ, co-developed the Sport Friendship Quality Scale (Weiss & Smith, 1999, 2002).