Advancing College Athlete Development via Social Support

Recently, college athlete well-being has been a topic of increased interest. Holistic and sustainable athlete development is both a critical and pertinent area of study. Researchers from the University of Memphis and East Carolina University set out to understand and examine how college athletes’ social support is critical to their development.

Sport development frameworks were used during this study, which consists of Attraction, Retention, and Tradition. Retention was the main guideline used to navigate this study because it is the main front-facing component of consumers while athletes are in while in school. Retention, in this context, is defined by athletes choosing to commit to their chosen sport instead of playing for fun with their friends.

Researchers used a two-phase mixed method procedure to conduct the study. First, researchers used the Sense of Community in Sport tool, three questions that were open-ended involving their unique athlete experience and their demographics, to create an online survey that was phase one of the study. The second phase was a focus group made up of athletes from institutions with the highest survey score in phase one. The focus group in phase two provided data that showed researchers the most effective policies and procedures at the highest-scoring institutions; the focus group’s answers were then used to answer the research questions.

776 student-athletes from 10 universities in the American Athletic Conference completed the survey in phase one of this study. These athletes make up 14.5 percent of all athletes in the American Athletic Conference. The athletes’ open-ended responses were used to create the interview guide for phase two.

The data was analyzed, and the athletes’ opinions and experiences were categorized by type and assigned one or several codes during the coding stage. Researchers considered past studies and retention framework along with the social support athletes need. The retention framework allowed researchers to focus on the issues most important to the athletes. The team used the NVivo 11 map function to chart the data, and then compared their findings until the data was saturated and agreed on the most prominent emerging themes.

Honesty and Openness, Athlete Equal Treatment, Intentional Programming, and Informal Interaction were four key themes that made up the focus group results in this study.

Honesty and Openness refers to open dialogue between the athletic department and the athlete, meaning that the athlete is allowed to ask questions directly to their athletic department without the fear of consequences. This theme also ensures that athletic departments enable athletes to be directly involved in critical macro decisions that are important to everyone involved. Thus, allowing athletes to feel like they are included and have ownership in the entire process.

Athlete Equal Treatment focuses on treating the athletes equally and how the appearance of everyone treated equally allowed for a thriving ecosystem in the athletic department. Equal treatment is critical when it comes to social support and the retention stage of the sport development frameworks.
Intentional Programming meant that the athletic department made up unique activities for athletes to engage with one another and opportunities to engage the athletic department. An example can be an ice cream social with the athletic director.

Informal Interaction was the final theme that is important for the social support of college athletes. Unlike Intentional Programming, Informal Interaction is unplanned and happens at a moment’s notice. Athletes want their leaders to be accessible at spontaneous moments throughout the day.

These four themes show that social support is key to athlete development. This study showed that making athletes comfortable with asking questions ad allowing their environment to feel open bolsters social support to advance athlete development. Athletes need a natural and engaging environment to thrive inside and outside their sport. Social support contributes to the holistic well-being of a student-athlete, and these four key themes can be implemented going forward to make athletes across the country feel socially supported by their athletic department.

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Berg, B. K., & Warner, S. (2019). Advancing College Athlete Development via Social Support. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.

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