Instrument

In-depth interviews were conducted based on a semi-structured script focused on the psychological, psychosocial, academic–vocational and financial levels of the HACM (Wylleman et al., 2013). The script addressed topics like the athletes' personal experiences in relation to DC, their sources of support, their motivations in relation to work, or their sources of income, following the underlying model that worked as a lens to build our vision of participant's events in terms of career and developmental stages (Debois et al., 2015). Drawing on Patton (2002), this script consisted of flexible questions, so that the participants could describe significant facts from their sports and academic–vocational careers, granting a certain freedom to the interviewers and the interviewees.