Student-Athlete Perception of Coaches Influence, Student Engagement, and Success Survey

The researcher developed the Student-Athlete Perception of Coaches Influence on Student Engagement and Student-Athlete Success Survey to use for this study. This instrument is made up of 16 items. Most of the items were extracted and modified from the 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). The researcher was granted permission to extract and modify items from the NSSE study by the Office of Postsecondary at the University of Indiana.

All items on the Student-Athlete Perception of Coaches Influence on Student Engagement and Student-Athlete Success Survey will be measured on a four-point Likert scale. Items one through five are measures for coaches’ influence. Item one was extracted from the NSSE survey to measure the quality of the player/coach relationship. Items two and three were created by the researcher to measure the quality of the player/coach relationship. Items four and five were extracted from the 2011 NSSE survey and measure the level of satisfaction student-athlete perceives about the coach. The wording on these items was modified in a way to address satisfaction with the coach instead of satisfaction with the institution. Reliability for these two items is .84. Items six, seven, eight, nine and 13b, measure the student-athlete’s perception of the coach’s encouragement of their participation in enriching educational experiences. Item nine measures the student-athletes perception of the coach’s encouragement of student-athlete engagement/participation in academic experiences. This item was created by the researcher and added to the coach’s encouragement of participation in enriching educational experiences scale. Item 10 measures the student-athlete’s perception of the coach’s impact on their personal and social development. This item is a part of the NSSE 2011 Gains in Personal and Social Development subscale. Cronbach’s alpha for the scale has high correlations of .869 for first year students and .877 for seniors. The scale is considered to be reliable. Items 11, 12, 13a, and 14 are mirror items six, seven, eight & 13b which are the benchmark items of the Enriching Educational Experiences subscale of the NSSE survey. Kuh (2009) stated that the use of benchmarks was necessary “to provide a common language and framework for discussion and reporting student engagement and institutional performance results…(p.13)”. Items 15 and 16 are the benchmark items for the Supportive Campus Environment subscale of the NSSE survey that address campus climate. Item 15 was modified slightly to include assistant coaches. Item 15specifically measures the student-athlete’s quality of relationship with students, faculty, administrators, and assistant coaches at the institution. Item 16 measures whether or not the campus environment is supportive. Cronbach’s alpha for these two items is .84.

Demographic information to be gleaned includes: student-athlete’s age, student-athlete’s gender, student-athlete’s ethnicity, student-athlete’s academic classification, student-athletes transfer status, student-athletes GPA, parent’s education level, student-athlete scholarship level, head coach’s gender, head coach’s ethnicity, and team’s winning percentage.