Student Athlete Research Paper

When looking at college athletes, we see them as athletes before students, we do not think about what that athlete may be feeling. Being a college athlete whether it be a division I athlete or a junior college athlete comes with high expectations to perform well. It is a huge time commitment because they must work out to stay in shape, go to practice every day, memorize plays, and travel to games while trying to maintain good academic standing. This can take its toll on their mental health, leading to high levels of stress and anxiety. When I see student athletes I often forget that they can be taking rigorous courses and that all athletics have different majors that require hours of studying and preparing for exams. As for me, sometimes just …show more content…
Tully both from the University of Adelaide, they looked at stressors of being a student athlete as well as what coping and support mechanisms student athletes use. Their goal in their study was to, “examine the stressors that students athletes report encountering, as well as the coping strategies and support mechanisms that they draw upon to integrate sport and education; thereby informing how to best support student athletes” (Cosh and Tully 121). In their study they took twenty Australian athletes 12 of which were female and 8 male, who were completing tertiary education and conducted interviews that lasted about one hour each. During these interviews the students were asked to, “outline their sport and study program before being asked to describe their experiences of combining elite-level sport and higher education” (Cosh and Tully 121). In the main portion of these interviews the questions that were asked were mainly about reasons of success and failure and how the athletes dealt with difficult times. In their result they gathered the responses and compiled a chart outlining the stressors these athletes faced. With four overarching stressors identified from scheduling, fatigue, coaches, and financial. As discussed earlier as a student I think my schedule is difficult, but for student athletes this is worse they are not only expected to go to class and get good grades, but are expected to go to practice, games, and have …show more content…
They performed a total of 3 studies, study 1 included a focus group discussion and they produced a questionnaire draft, in study 2 and 3 they confirmed the scale used to measure the life stress of college student athletes. In study 1 the focus group included 30 Taiwanese college student athletes, in the group discussions were held in subgroups. The purpose of these subgroups was to get feedback from the athletes, the athletes were able to discuss freely their challenges. From the feedback, using the Delphi method a questionnaire was produced by the researchers. From that questionnaire they performed study 2 in order to trim the initial questionnaire down. From there study 3 was done in order to confirm their results. The results from doing all of these studies was, “The results demonstrate that a 24-item CSALSS containing eight factors is an acceptable tool for measuring college student-athletes’ life stress” (Lu et al. 262). This essentially means that their studies provided valid data confirming the content of their studies. This is an excellent study where confirming the results was apparent and important to the researchers. The eight factors identified were: sports injury, performance demand, coach relationships, training