Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

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Open Access Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine two types of commitment with intercollegiate athletes as well as differences between walk-on (non-scholarship) athletes and scholarship athletes (partial/full) using the sport commitment model (SCM; Scanlan et al., 2016). Participants included 153 Division I athletes (54 males, 98 females, & 1 nonbinary) from 12 different intercollegiate sports at the University of Northern Iowa. These participants were between the ages of 18 and 24 years of age (M = 20.26 years, SD = 1.31). Approximately 35% of the participants were on a full scholarship, 41.8% were on partial scholarship, and 22.9% of the participants did not receive any form of athletic aid (i.e., scholarship) for participating in their sport. Enthusiastic commitment was predicted by higher sport enjoyment, valuable opportunities, personal investments (amount), social constraints, perceived competence, informational social support, desire to master skills, athletic identity, and lower emotional social support. For constrained commitment, higher sense of loss of personal investments, higher social constraints, other priorities, perceived costs, and lower sport enjoyment, valuable opportunities, perceived competence, informational social support, and desire to master skills were the significant predictors. Scholarship athletes were found to have higher amounts of personal investments, desire to win (desire to excel-social), and athletic identity than walk-on athletes. Findings suggest predictors of enthusiastic and constrained commitment may be beneficial to understand in efforts to enhance the overall experience of intercollegiate athletes. Further research is needed to identify differences between walk-ons and scholarship athletes in terms of variables that may be most beneficial to focus on to increase their commitment.

Year of Submission

2023

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Kinesiology

First Advisor

Windee Weiss

Date Original

7-2023

Object Description

1 PDF file (86 pages)

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