Academic Misconduct and Performance of Student-Athletes: Examining Sport-to-School Spillover of Identity and Achievement Goals

• In Event: Today's Collegiate Student-Athlete Experiences: Understanding the Psychosocial, Motivational, and Contextual Factors Involved

Abstract

The context within which Division I undergraduate student-athletes achieve in academics is unique because athletic participation is contingent on their academic attainment. Specifically, Division I student-athletes are subject to the academic eligibility requirements set up by the NCAA (n.d.), such as a minimum GPA, a steady progress towards degree, and a number of years for degree completion. Student-athletes who are strongly invested in sport participation are likely doing it at the expense of academic performance (e.g., Nwadike & Zhang, 2021; Yukhymenko-Lescroart, 2021, 2022). Therefore, it is important to consider sport-to-school spillover effects on student-athletes’ academic outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of academic and athletic identity and achievement goal in academic misconduct and performance (GPA) of Division I varsity student-athletes. Following literature (e.g., García, under review; Krou et al., 2021; Richardson et al., 2012), Figure 1 shows the hypothesized relationships.

Method
Participants were 1151 undergraduate student-athletes (44.2% female; 32.2% freshman, 26.2% sophomore, 26.3% junior, 15.4% senior; 71.4% White, 20.2% Black, 8.4% other; 24.0% first-generation students) from nine Division I NCAA institutions from various sports. Participants completed several scales (see Table 1) administered on paper. The main analysis was structural equation modeling (SEM), performed in Mplus, version 8.8 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012–2022).

Results
Preliminary analysis indicated a good fit of the SEM model based on the guidelines of Hair et al. (2019, p. 642): χ2(602, N = 1151) = 1888.46, p < .001, RMSEA = .043, 90% CI [.041, .045], CFI = .938, TLI = .931, SRMR = .039. As shown in Table 2, internal consistency was high for all variables. Academic misconduct was significantly correlated with all measured variables. GPA, on the other hand, was significantly correlated with the academic variables only. Main results are shown in Figure 2, Table 3, and Table 4. Academic misconduct was negatively predicted by academic mastery goal and athletic task goal and positively predicted by athletic ego goal (see Table 3). Tests of indirect effects (see Table 4) suggested that academic mastery goal fully mediated the negative relationship between academic identity and academic misconduct. The relationships between athletic identity and academic misconduct were mediated by athletic task and athletic ego goals (see Table 4), but they canceled each other out. GPA was predicted positively by academic identity and academic performance goal, and negatively by athletic identity. Additionally, academic performance goals mediated the positive relationship between academic identity and GPA.

Discussion
Findings were generally consistent with previous studies on the positive role of goal orientation towards learning (mastery, task) and the negative role of goal orientation towards performance (performance, ego) in academic misconduct and performance (e.g., García et al., under review; Krou et al., 2021; Richardson et al., 2012). Importantly, findings provided support for the sport-to-school spillover effects for Division I student-athletes. The conditions under which the positive spillover effects will be discussed, which has important implications because student-athletes are frequently viewed as a privileged group who prioritizes athletic participation over academic performance (Yukhymenko-Lescroart & Sharma, 2021.

Author

• Mariya Yukhymenko, California State University - Fresno
  Presenting Author