Dissertation Research

Abstract

Student engagement literature suggests that engagement in “educationally purposeful activities” (Kuh, 2004) contributes to a higher chance of student success. Since coaches serve as gatekeepers for student-athletes, an examination of their role is necessary to accurately measure their impact on learning outcomes related to student-athlete success like, persistence, graduation, academic achievement and personal social development. The proposed correlational study is designed to explore the relationship between coaches’ influence and student engagement among a sample of women’s basketball players at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I (DI) institutions. Results are likely to inform administrators and policy makers on best practices to guide coaches in their efforts and provide a more valid measure for evaluating coaches’ influence on student-athlete success.

Background

The number of teams penalized for not achieving student-athlete success has gone down since the National College Athletic Association began holding institutions and coaches accountable. According to the NCAA, student-athlete success is continuous enrollment at the same school (retention) and eligibility for sport participation each semester (eligibility) and successful completion of a degree within a six-year period (graduation) (Brown, 2012). Retention and eligibility are combined to determine a student-athlete’s persistence. The NCAA’s use of persistence and gradation as indicators of student-athlete success are supported in literature. In student development literature, student success indicators may also be referred to as student success outcomes. Student success outcomes may be psychosocial, cognitive or affective. The student engagement outcome (affective) has received a lot of attention over the past 20 years and has been linked very closely with student success.

Student engagement is defined as the amount of physical and physiological energy students devote to the college experience and the school’s use of resources through the curriculum, learning opportunities, and support services that lead to experiences and outcomes that constitute student success. Student engagement has been defined as a key factor in student success and is considered the pathway to student success (Hu, 2011). If this is true, then it is safe to say that the more engaged a student-athlete is in his/her college experience, the better chance he/she has at persisting and graduating. The problem is that the athletic subculture within the college experience has been deemed to have a negative impact on the college experience for the student-athlete because of low academic expectations with an emphasis on maintaining eligibility to compete in sports; increasing commercialization of college sports; and coaches being pressured to win at all costs (Comeaux & Harrison, 2011).

In athletics, win/loss records determine coaches’ level of athletic success. Win/loss records could be indicators of the coach’s knowledge of game specific strategies. Win/loss records could also be an indicator of the coach’s ability to effectively lead a team to work toward achieving specific goals. However, win/loss records do not necessarily determine the overall growth and athletic development of the student-athlete. It is possible for a team to experience losses while the overall athletic development of the student-athlete actually increases and vice versa.

Similarly, this logic is being applied to the NCAA’s new policy aimed at attaching the team’s APR scores to the head coach as a measure of coach’s influence on student-athlete success. The APR score may reflect the recruiting ability of the head coach or maybe the type of support services available to student-athletes, but it is not an indicator of the coaches’ influence on student-athlete success. However, there are many people who believe that coaches’ influence is a very important factor in student-athlete success. This is because in many situations, a student-athlete’s first introduction to an institution is through a coach. Prior to matriculation in college, coaches can spend one to two years cultivating a potential student-athlete through phone calls, emails, letters and scouting. Howard-Hamilton and Sina (2001) found that the cultivation process forges strong emotional ties between the student-athlete and the coach. According to the NCAA 2010 Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Learning of Students in College (GOALS) study, 40 to 60 percent of the respondents would not have chosen the same school if a different coach had been in place (Brown, 2011). This strong bond with the coach is further reinforced once the student-athlete gets on campus as the coaches organize strict schedules for student-athletes around practices, games, team meetings, community service and study hours.

College athletics is undergoing much scrutiny, and University administrators are reexamining coaches’ influence and their impact on athletics in higher education. Recent reforms by the NCAA have placed more accountability for student-athlete success on the Head Coach using the APR rate as the primary indicator. The APR is a persistence indicator that accounts for student-athlete continuous enrollment in school and eligibility for sport participation by tracking the academic performance of a student-athlete each semester. There are questions about using this performance indicator as an indicator of the coaches’ influence on student-athlete success.

While there are numerous verbal accounts of players who have expressed how much their coach impacted their life, there is currently no measure in place to examine coach’s influence and student-athlete success. In a national study of the experiences of student-athletes as students, Potuto and O’Hanlon (2007), found that 93.5 percent of all student-athletes believed that their coaches were more concerned with their graduating than their professors. Concern, however, does not equal influence. There have only been a couple of studies that attempted to look at coach’s influence: the GOALS study and the Study of College Outcomes and Recent Experiences (SCORE) study. These studies examined issues relevant to the coach’s role in recruitment and college choice, ethical leadership, time spent with coach, academic experiences and social experiences. They found that:

· Men and women’s basketball players are most likely to tie school choice to the coach

· Women’s basketball coaches were rated most poorly in ethical leadership

· Division I women’s basketball players reported lower levels of trust for their coach

· Men and women’s basketball players reported the highest levels of disrespectful behavior from their coaches.

· Less support from the coach to earn a degree was cited as one of the factors contributing to a student-athlete not graduating.

These strong inferences to the importance of the coach imply that coaches have a direct impact on student-athlete success and thus require closer examination. These actions reveal a need to operationalize coaches’ as institutional resources.

Purpose

Over the past 29 years, the NCAA has come under major scrutiny from public and private sectors regarding its intense policy reforms addressing student-athlete recruitment (academic eligibility standards), persistence (satisfactory-academic progress toward degree standards), graduation (graduation rate standards) and more recently coaches’ influence (Head Coach Academic Progress Rate [APR] Portfolio). This study was developed to take a closer look at the student-athlete college experience. The proposed study will investigate the relationship between coaches’ influence and student engagement, through the development of an instrument that can be used to measure the coaches’ influence on student-athlete success.

Research Questions

1. Is there a relationship between coaches’ influence and student-athlete levels of student engagement?

2. Is coaches’ influence related to student-athlete levels of student engagement when controlling for campus climate?

3. Are there differences in the student-athlete levels of student engagement based on the head coaches’ gender?

Participants

The participants in this study will be student-athletes participating in intercollegiate women’s basketball at four-year institutions, which are members of the NCAA Division, I classification.

Instrumentation

Student-Athlete Perception of Coaches Influence on Student Engagement and Student-Athlete Success Survey. Click here for more about the survey.

References

Brown, G. (2011). Second GOALS study emphasizes coach's influence. NCAA News Online. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org

Brown, G. (2012). NCAA student-athlete participation hits 450,000. NCAA News Online. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org

Comeaux, E., & Harrison, K. H. (2011). A conceptual model of academic success for student-athletes. Educational Researcher, 40(5), 235-245.

Howard-Hamilton, M. F., & Sina, J. A. (2001). How college affects student-athletes. New Directions for Student Services, 93, 35-45.

Hu, S. (2011). Reconsidering the relationship between student engagement and persistence in college. Innovative Higher Education, 36(2), 97-106.

Potuto, J. R., & O'Hanlon, J. (2007). National study of student-athletes regarding their experiences as college students. College Student Journal, 41(4), 947-966.