ABSTRACT

As diversity and its importance within our world and society increases, one’s need for cultural intelligence (CQ) has increased exponentially, and many colleges believe that developing their students’ cultural intelligence is a top priority. Based on the idea that the greatest cognitive growth for members of all racial groups in college occurs through quality interracial interaction outside the classroom with one’s peers (Locks, Hurtado, Bowman, & Oseguera, 2008), one particular population that might prove prosperous for cultivating cultural acceptance and appreciation is in college athletics due to its often times more heterogenous population. While there has not been much specific research in terms of athletes and CQ, Hirko (2007) concluded that racial diversity is an important part of the education of student athletes and that institutions of higher education should support collegiate athletics as a “learning environment with potential for quality interracial interactions.” Because of this, the researcher sought to investigate whether or not collegiate athletes have more CQ than college students who do not participate in athletics. To test this, both college athletes and traditional college students that do not participate in any collegiate sports took the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) Self-Report developed by Ang & Van Dyne (2008) that includes four factors of CQ: metacognitive CQ, cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, and behavioral CQ. It was hypothesized that athletes who participate in sports at the college level will record higher CQ on the CQS than will students who do not participate in college level sports. However, the results suggest that non-athletes actually scored higher on CQ than athletes, although the only significant difference was in behavioral CQ. The biggest findings from the study seem to be the link between higher CQ scores and experiential factors. One’s ethnicity, the number of close friends with different ethnicities, and living outside of the U.S. were all related with higher CQ scores. Because of this, colleges should focus on creating these interactions as often as possible with hopes that they can blossom into friendships and a diversity of thoughts and opinions.