An exploratory mixed-methods study on student-athletes' motivation for assessment in sport and academic settings

Abstract

Student-athletes in university undergo assessments in both sport and academic domains, which can encompass varying conceptions and outcomes related to assessment. However, questions on whether this ‘doubling up’ of assessments result in similar or different assessment-related outcomes, or whether assessments are conceived the same way across sport and academic contexts, are an omission in achievement research. This study sought to explore the experiences of Canadian student-athletes’ conceptions of assessment, perceptions of control, and emotions in sport and academia through an explanatory mixed-methods design. The study comprised 77 Canadian USports university athletes (M_age = 20.21) for the quantitative data, and 6 athletes partaking in focus group/individual interviews for the qualitative data. The quantitative findings revealed student-athletes reported higher conceptions of assessment as fun and irrelevant in sport compared to university, and greater emotions such as anger, helplessness, and relief in university compared to sport (p < .05). In the qualitative strand, three themes were identified for conceptions of assessment: function, discrete outcomes, broad consequences; three themes for perceptions of control: effort, preparation, and motivation; and three themes for emotions: anticipatory, retrospective, and relational. Mixed insights revealed the importance of assessment consequences, the natural motivation and effort for sport assessment, and the differences in positive and negative emotions between sport and academic domains. Recommendations are discussed for both postsecondary coaches and instructors to help improve sport and academic assessment in ways tailored to the student-athlete experience of assessment.

Keywords:

• Conceptions of assessment
• student-athletes
• mixed-methods
• perceived control
• emotions

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Sammy King Fai Hui
• Curriculum & Instruction
• The Education University of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong
• Hong Kong

SUBJECTS:

• Educational Psychology
• Higher Education
• Sport and Exercise Science
• Education - Social Sciences

Introduction

The very classification as a ‘student-athlete’ indicates a duality that researchers, coaches, and instructors cannot ignore. Only student-athletes have to simultaneously shape both athletic and academic identities (see Steele et al., 2020 for a review; Yukhymenko-Lescroart, 2018). When considered separately, strong athletic identities have been linked to commitment to athletic roles and success (Horton & Mack, 2000) and strong academic identities have been associated with school-related commitment and performance (García et al., 2023; Love & Rufer, 2021). However, student-athletes may not precisely balance their identities instead swaying one way more than the other. Some results show that athletes who prioritize their athletic identities focus less on academics, have poorer academic adjustment, and greater difficulty transitioning away from sports (Lally & Kerr, 2005; Melendez, 2009). Recognizing this, some jurisdictions impose practice restrictions to help limit time student-athletes dedicate to sport and encourage them to have sufficient time to focus on schooling (Ayers et al., 2012) and there are recent initiatives to support student-athletes in their educational experiences (e.g. Comeaux & Crandall, 2019). Instead of looking for tension between the roles, the present study focused on an activity that is used across both sport and academic contexts, namely assessment.

Assessment is a significant part of both sport and academic settings. Assessment indicates to students how well they are performing in school and in their sport. Assessment can elicit anxiety in both contexts and has implications for advancement in both contexts. As such, it may be critically important to consider the unique assessment experiences for student-athletes who undergo a doubling up of assessment. To do this, student-athlete conceptions of assessment, perceived control, and assessment-linked emotions were compared between the sport and academic domains. This study sought to thoroughly consider these domain-specific variables using a mixed-methods design to provide a more informative understanding of the assessment-laden experience of student-athletes in a postsecondary setting.

Student-athletes and assessment

Assessments through quizzes, tests, laboratory work, and term papers are a common experience in students’ lives. For athletes, assessment of strength, power, speed, agility and various sport-specific skills is part of their sport experience. Generally, assessment is defined as needed to understand the ‘state or condition’ of learning, such as through observation, or measurement (Watson, n.d.). Despite assessment practices being an important component in both sport and academic achievement domains, there is little to no research comparing student-athletes’ experiences of assessment across these domains. Although assessment in sport and academic settings share the fundamental purpose of evaluating performance and providing feedback to improve it (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Fukuda, 2018), it is possible that student-athletes in postsecondary may have different experiences, perceptions, and feelings about assessment across the two domains. This comparison of assessment may be especially important for student-athletes because juggling multiple achievement tasks can place demands on students’ time and cognitive resources.

Because of the ubiquity of assessment in both domains, student-athletes represent a unique population in which to consider assessment. Particularly in postsecondary education, student learning is most often assessed through testing (Rawlusyk, 2018), which students report can be stress-inducing. For example, in a study examining 535 Canadian university students in Ontario, exams worth 50% or greater were rated as one of the most ‘severe stressors’ among students (Linden et al., 2022). This finding aligns with other empirical evidence that links test-related assessment practices and anxiety (Zeidner, 2014). But assessment can also be very useful for students–as a tool for improvement and active learning (McGinnis et al., 2018).

In sport, assessment practices include game-based performance statistics, physical or skills training, and physiological testing of body composition or hydration (Fukuda, 2018). Assessments in sport are often used by coaches and athletic programs to show how well their players or teams are performing, but can also inform program effectiveness, talent development, training programs, and recruitment or selection procedures (Fukuda, 2018). In both domains student-athletes can experience a wide range of assessments both designed to summatively evaluate their performance by comparing them to a standard, or formatively support their growth or improvement by providing feedback.

The student-athlete experience is distinct from the general student population (Comeaux, 2019; Comeaux & Harrison, 2011). When considering the literature concerning postsecondary students’ experiences with assessment, it is not possible to parse out the student-athletes who ‘double up’ in experiencing assessments in sport and academic domains simultaneously. In other words, the assessment literature does not distinguish student-athletes from non-athletes. In other research, this type of dual role has proven to reveal important differences (Daniels et al., 2021) that may also be relevant to understanding assessment across domains. It is an open question as to how student-athletes invest their time and energy into preparing, staying motivated, and achieving in both their sport and academic assessments.

Motivation in assessment: conceptual framework

Assessment is a fundamentally human process embedded in social contexts (Brown, 2017), and one such context is athletics. As student-athletes encounter years of assessment in both sport and academic domains, they form conceptions about the purposes of assessment, perceptions about their control in the situation, and emotional responses to assessment and outcomes (see Figure 1). The present study focuses on how these three motivation constructs differ between sport and academic domains: conceptions of assessment (Brown et al., 2019), perceived control (Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2012), and discrete achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun et al., 2023).

Figure 1. Visualization of the conceptual framework for motivation of assessment.

Conceptions of assessment

Conceptions of assessment (COA) refer to ‘the cognitive beliefs about and affective attitudes toward assessment’ (Brown et al., 2019, p. 1). Students’ COA are varied because they can be viewed in positive ways, keeping students accountable and improving learning, but also in negative ways, being viewed as irrelevant and unfair (Brown & Hirschfeld, 2008). In the education literature, COA have been measured in terms of how assessment can boost students’ academic performance, can be ignored, fun, and keep students accountable (Brown & Hirschfeld, 2008; Peterson & Irving, 2008). Notably, Brown’s COA measure has evidenced meaningful relations with academic performance, and motivational constructs such as perceived control-related constructs (e.g. effort, self-efficacy), and even some emotions (e.g. anxiety) among students in New Zealand, Germany, Hong Kong, and the USA.

Further, in a recent review examining studies considering students’ COA in education, positive evaluations of how assessments function were linked to better performance and self-regulatory behaviours, and adaptive beliefs about assessment were related to greater self-efficacy, effort, and motivation among other factors (Brown, 2022). However, in sport settings, athletes’ COA appear to be unexplored in the research literature even though, arguably, student-athletes likely have formed cognitive beliefs and affective attitudes about assessment in sport.

Perceptions of control

Perceived control refers to a person’s subjective capacity to influence outcomes or events (Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2012). In academic settings, perceived academic control, or PAC, refers to students’ beliefs that they have the personal capacity to influence academic-related outcomes (Perry et al., 2005; Respondek et al., 2020). Studies on PAC reveal it is associated with adaptive emotions (You & Kang, 2014), increased academic performance, and lower drop-out rates (Respondek et al., 2017, 2020). In Canadian student athletes, PAC shared positive relationships with general perceived control, perceived course success, and academic achievement (Parker et al., 2016).

In sport performance settings, perceived control has largely been studied in its connection with sport-related stress or anxiety (e.g. Vacher et al., 2019). In Division I collegiate athletes in the USA, having an internal locus of control was linked to lower perceived stress and higher academic scholarship (Holden et al., 2019). In another study, perceived control in adolescent swimmers predicted greater recovery and lower stress states (Vacher et al., 2019). Similar to the academic domain, perceived control has not been studied alongside student-athletes’ sport assessment experiences.

Achievement emotions

Achievement emotions are commonly experienced in postsecondary schooling, and are linked to achievement-related activities, like classroom assessments. For decades, achievement emotion research focused almost exclusively on students’ test anxiety (Zeidner, 2014). As the name implies, test anxiety occurs in direct response to a test, or some form of summative assessment, that a student views as highly valued but difficult to control (Roos et al., 2021). However, upon reflection there are many emotions surrounding tests, and by extension, assessment. Pekrun et al. (2004) created the Test Emotions Questionnaire (TEQ) showing that beyond anxiety, students report feeling joy, hope, pride, and relief alongside anger, shame, and hopelessness in assessment situations with important associations with their effort, study strategies, and achievement. There is little doubt in the literature now that assessment in school is an emotion-laden event.

As was the case in academic settings, anxiety was the first emotion to catch the interest of sport psychologists largely because of its negative impact on performance (Kleine, 1990). Also, some sport researchers suggest that other emotions are also relevant. Lazarus (2000) considers emotion in sport that draws on the relational meaning athletes attribute to situations. Based on this, Frame and Reichin (2019) summarized how anxiety, anger, guilt, shame, hope, relief, happiness, and pride are all common emotions related to sport performance. In many ways, sport performance in the form of competition, games, and tournaments is the pinnacle of ‘assessment’ and thus these emotions can be assumed to also exist in other forms of sport assessment that happen throughout the season. Moreover, Nicholls et al. (2009) found that professional rugby players had higher intensity of anxiety, anger, pride, and hope during games but greater frequency of these emotions during training sessions; however, neither games nor training were conceptualized in terms of assessment. Although the evidence on emotion in sport assessment may be sparse, the logical argumentation suggests emotions are an important element in the assessment experience of sport.

Current study

Student-athletes’ experiences of assessment-related motivation are explored across sport and academic domains. A postsecondary education setting to consider assessment was chosen because not only are assessment practices connected to high stakes (e.g. competing/playing time, graduating) which are important when considering emotion and motivation factors, but assessment methods can also vary greatly at postsecondary levels. This reason is important to consider in order to gather a more in-depth understanding of student-athletes’ assessment perspectives in this setting. A mixed-methods design was selected and the following questions were asked: How do student-athletes’ COA, perceived control, and emotions differ between sport and academic domains? What are student-athletes’ experiences of sport and academic assessment-related motivation? How do athletes’ experiences of assessment-related motivation help explain the quantitative results? We hypothesized that student-athletes’ COA in sport will significantly differ from their COA in the academic domain (two-tailed hypothesis).

Method

An explanatory sequential design was employed (Figure 2). The quantitative strand involved a within-person correlational design to look at assessment between sport and academic domains within individual participants. The qualitative strand followed a descriptive qualitative approach to ‘provide straightforward descriptions of [student-athletes’] experiences and perceptions’ (Doyle et al., 2020, p. 444) of assessment and motivation in sport and academia. The two strands were intentionally mixed at sampling, materials, analysis, and discussion.¹ The method and plan for analyses were pre-registered through the Open Science Framework. Research ethics approval was granted from the researcher’s institutional research board and from Canadian institutions that required additional approval.

Figure 2. Visualization of the explanatory mixed-methods design.

Team approach

The authors of the present study formed a collaborative team for the conceptualization, interpretation, analysis, and reporting of this research as recommended for mixed-methods research (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). The first author trained as a social psychologist studying student-athlete populations. This member was a former college athlete and assistant athletic director at a liberal arts college in Canada–bringing athlete and sport administration experience to the team. The second and last authors have expertise in motivation, assessment, and mixed-methods analysis. They relied on regular conversation and reflection to manage their biases which, in particular, involved an expectation that student-athletes would generally view assessment in sport more favourably than in school. Throughout the project, the members met and provided their varying skillsets and expertise helping to produce collaborative mixed insights to the findings that would not have been possible for any member on their own.

Quantitative strand: participants, procedure, and measures

To recruit participants for the quantitative survey, a snowball sampling technique was used (Parker et al., 2019). Athletic staff and eligible athletes from Canadian universities were sent emails with an online survey link. Participating athletes provided informed consent on the first page of the survey. To be eligible, they had to have less than 30% missing data (e.g. survey responses), to be enrolled in university, to be currently competing in a USports sport, and be above the age of 18. Ninety-one student-athletes completed surveys; however, 14 athletes did not meet two inclusion criteria: they had more than 30% missing data and were not currently competing in USports. Athletes were thanked with a $1 donation to Kidsport Canada on their behalf. The majority of the final sample (n = 77) were between the ages of 19 and 21 (77%), within the first three years of sport eligibility (69%), with 74% women and 26% men (none identified as non-binary). The sample identified as 87% White, 4% Black, 4% Asian, 4% Other, and 1% Aboriginal. They competed in a variety of sports such as soccer, hockey, rugby, swimming, and cross country.

A study goal was to consider within-person perceptions of assessment across the sport and academic domains and therefore all participants completed items tailored to each domain. To measure participants’ COA, they completed 10 items adapted from Brown and Hirschfeld (2008) for each domain. The four subscales were: internal assessment accountability (Sport: α = .68; Academic: α = .57), external assessment accountability (Sport: α = .53; Academic: α = .72), assessment is irrelevant (Sport: α = .72; Academic: α = .87), and assessment as fun (Sport: α = .68; Academic: α = .79). The response scale was 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Participants were asked to rate eight items measuring their perceptions of control in university courses and sport based on Perry et al. (2005) perceived academic control scale (Sport: α = .82; Academic: α = .85). Participants responded on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Finally, assessment-related emotions were measured by asking participants to rate the following six single-item emotions on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree): anxiety, enjoyment, anger, helplessness, pride, and relief (see supplementary materials).

Qualitative strand: participants, procedure, materials

Among the 77 athlete participants who completed the survey, six individuals consented to be contacted via email for follow-up online focus group/interviews to further discuss their experiences of sport and academic assessment. All six athletes participated and were assigned pseudonyms to ensure anonymity. The first author conducted one focus group with two athletes, and four individual interviews via Zoom between April 2021 and June 2021. A decision was made to use a combination of focus groups and individual interviews simply to accommodate participants’ schedules and avoid losing out on qualitative data from the participants.

Each session ranged from approximately 15 to 30 minutes. Prior to clicking the Zoom link, the participants were provided informed consent forms and notified that clicking the link to participate implied informed consent to partake and have the audio of the sessions recorded. Participants were asked open-ended questions about their experiences with sport and academic assessment in university with a focus on describing their COA, perceptions of control, and emotions as aligned with the quantitative strand. The full interview protocol is available upon request.

Plan for analyses

For the quantitative strand, first zero-order correlations were calculated separately for sport and academic domains. Second, paired-sample t-tests were conducted to examine differences in COA, perceived control, and emotions within students but across sport and academic domains.

For the qualitative strand, the research team transcribed the interviews verbatim and followed a hybrid deductive-inductive approach to content analysis (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). As is common in descriptive qualitative designs, the analyses stayed close to participants’ words with language viewed as a mechanism for communication rather than a structure to be interpreted (Kim et al., 2017). Two of the researchers began with a close reading of the transcripts each separately highlighting the text into large meaning units consisting of shared words. Then, the researchers collectively discussed these comments and used them to establish descriptions aligned with the concepts of COA, perceived control, and emotions. The researchers met to discuss this coding, identified and resolved all discrepancies, and finalized a codebook containing the final descriptive categories, subordinate codes, definitions (i.e. what the code means), anti-definition (i.e. what the code is not), and examples of verbatim quotes. A summary of the codebook was provided to all six participants who were invited to provide feedback. None of the participants offered revisions for the findings presented.

For the mixed analyses, two strands were intentionally integrated at four points of the methodology (Onwuegbuzie & Combs, 2011). First, participants in the qualitative strand were recruited from the original quantitative strand. This means that the qualitative data are best suited to explain the quantitative results on the whole rather than a discrete group of students. Second, in terms of data collection, the qualitative semi-structured interview protocol was designed to describe the same concepts as measured in the quantitative strand. Third, the deductive portion of the content analysis linked participants’ qualitative descriptions to the measured constructs. Finally, a side-by-side joint display (Guetterman et al., 2015) was created revealing three mixed insights generated from the two strands.

Results

Quantitative strand

The correlations amongst constructs were generally consistent in both magnitude and direction between the two domains although some notable differences can be seen in Table S1 (supplementary materials). In terms of mean differences, participants reported significantly higher conceptions of assessment as fun and irrelevant in sport than in university (Table 1). In contrast, emotions tended to be stronger in regard to academic assessment than sport with participants reporting more anger, helplessness, and relief in school than sport. There were no significant differences in mean levels of internal accountability, external accountability, anxiety, pride, or perceived control across the two domains.

Table 1. Paired-samples t-tests.

	Sport	Academic
Variable	M (SD)	M (SD)	t	df	p	95% CI	Cohen’s d
Internal assessment accountability	3.65 (.65)	3.81 (.54)	−1.76	76	.083	[−.32, .02]	.20
External assessment accountability	3.09 (.77)	3.16 (.86)	−0.77	75	.446	[−.26, .12]	.09
Assessment is irrelevant	2.08 (.65)	1.92 (.65)	2.01*	76	.048	[.001, .31]	.23
Assessment is fun	3.31 (.81)	2.95 (.87)	3.81**	76	<.001	[.17, .54]	.43
Perceived control	3.91 (.55)	4.04 (.54)	−1.74	74	.086	[−.28, .02]	.20
Anxiety	3.71 (1.07)	3.95 (1.02)	−1.66	75	.101	[−.52, .05]	.19
Enjoyment	3.29 (.98)	2.88 (.95)	3.04**	76	.003	[.14, .67]	.35
Anger	2.34 (.80)	2.58 (1.00)	−2.22*	76	.029	[−.47, −.03]	.25
Helplessness	2.16 (.84)	2.44 (.95)	−2.21*	76	.030	[−.54, −.03]	.25
Pride	3.58 (.71)	3.75 (.86)	−1.39	76	.170	[−.41, .07]	.16
Relief	3.92 (.79)	4.32 (.72)	−4.33**	76	<.001	[−.59, −.22]	.49

Note. *p ≤ .05 two-tailed. **p ≤ .01 two-tailed.

Qualitative strand

The six participants were able to clearly describe personal experiences with assessment and motivation in both sport and academic domains related to COA, perceptions of control, and emotions. According to their scores on the quantitative measures, the six qualitative participants were both different from, and similar to, the full sample on COA, perceptions of control, and emotions suggesting they did not represent any specific subgroup (Table 2). Three themes were identified for each aspect of assessment: for COA the themes were function, discrete outcomes, broad consequences, for perceptions of control the themes were effort, preparation, motivation, and for emotions the themes were anticipatory, retrospective, relational. Although the discrete examples differed between domains, the overall descriptions were similar and no domain-specific unique themes emerged.

Table 2. Description of qualitative participants (n = 6).

Pseudonym	Gender	Primary sport	Program year	Age	Above average (+1 SD)^a	Below average (−1 SD)^b	Descriptive profile
Nina	Woman	Volleyball	Fourth	21	Sport and course pride	n/a	Proud of assessment
Melanie	Woman	Rugby	First	19	Conception of sport assessment as fun, PSC, PAC, sport pride and enjoyment, course anxiety	Conception of sport and course assessment as irrelevant, sport anxiety, and course and sport anger and helplessness	Favours sport assessment
Brianne	Woman	Soccer	Second	21	Conception of sport and course assessment as irrelevant	PAC and PSC, sport and course COA as internal accountability, course and sport relief	Low value for assessment in general
Joe	Man	Volleyball	First	19	PSC, sport and course COA as fun, sport enjoyment	Sport relief	Enjoys assessment in general
Ally	Woman	Field hockey	Second	19	Conception of sport assessment as internal accountability, sport anxiety	Sport and course COA as fun, sport enjoyment, sport and course relief	Responsibility/pressure on self for sport assessment
Steph	Woman	Field hockey	Third	21	Conception of course assessment as external accountability, course anxiety and enjoyment	Conception of course assessment as irrelevant, course anger	University accountable for course assessment; values course assessment

Note. ^aAbove average (+1 SD) = the individual scored 1 standard deviation above the mean on the quantitative variables listed. ^bBelow average (-1SD) = the individual scored 1 standard deviation below the mean on the quantitative variables listed.

Conceptions of assessment (COA)

The student-athletes described the function of assessment, a variety of discrete outcomes of assessment, and the broader consequences of assessments. The participants shared ways in which assessment in sport and academic domains provided direction for their future and allowed them to learn from their mistakes. For example, regarding academics, when referring to a midterm assessment, Melanie explained that ‘when I get it back–even if I do bad–it’s still like ‘at least I know’ or especially if they give the right answers and how to do them, it can really help.’ She expanded on this by explaining that since her midterm was open book, she was able to write down the answers and go over the ones she got wrong, noting how helpful this was. Similarly, in her sport (field hockey), Steph explained that ‘all the testing tells us where we are if we’re below where we need to be or if we’re above.’ She referred to a scored running test and how the staff running the camp for the junior national program go over her scores compared to international standards. She repeated the directive aspect of assessment and its importance for her sport-specific training:

‘it’s helpful because it’s good to be able to see whether you’re on the right track. Especially with the way, at least our sport is set up, a lot of the time you’re not training centrally, you’re training by yourself. So, it can kind of be strange doing fitness and not knowing whether it’s actually helping or anything. So, it’s nice to know that what you’re doing is working’.

Participants described an acute awareness of the outcome of assessments, including their perceived level of success and the amount and usefulness of feedback, in both domains. Brianne contrasted sport and academic assessment saying:

‘oh my gosh of course I take soccer more serious. So, when I receive feedback from soccer, I try to improve and improve and improve. When I receive feedback from classes from quizzes I always say to myself, “oh okay I tried my best,” I'm always relaxed with the classes, with the quizzes, in school when I'm not with soccer, if that makes sense.’

These discrete outcomes were part of the bigger picture of the broad consequences of sport and academic assessment. In the academic domain, the consequences were often related to grades and their relevance for graduation and futures. For example, Nina discussed seeing the ‘broader picture ahead’ for course assessment, explaining ‘I need to do well on this because I need to graduate with a good GPA.’ In contrast, the consequences of assessment in sport were less distal and more immediate such as Steph’s explanation that assessment is not ‘really an opportunity, at least in my sport, that would never be something I would do professionally or as a career.’

Perceptions of control

Next, participants described ways in which they invested effort and prepared for assessment in both sport and academic domains in order to enhance their perceptions of control. For example, Joe provided an example of having to work hard in his history course explaining ‘…it was a writing course… those are kind of my weaker courses. So, I definitely had to work harder than my other courses.’ In addition, Steph said ‘yeah it was one of my math courses so it was very long and quite tough. I had to study quite hard for it.’ This paralleled Melanie’s example in sport that ‘they told us when it was so if I didn’t know when it was, I probably wouldn’t have trained so hard.’ Participants described how they plan, set aside sufficient time, and in the case of sport employ both physical and mental preparation. For example, Nina noted when reflecting on a specific university assignment, you have ‘to calculate the hours you need to put into it and time needed to be set aside for it also’. In sport, Melanie said ‘…it was kind of like what you should do to prepare for it, so you should run a beep test and use the program, so then you felt prepared.’ Regardless of its specific format, effort and preparation were central parts of assessment in both domains.

Even though effort and preparation were similar across the domains, participants often described a motivation for sport assessment that was different from the academic domain. As an example, Melanie said ‘I find sport [assessment] a lot easier to be motivated for because you love it, because you have that passion for it.’ Brianne responded ‘I think I take [assessment] more serious in sport…just because I love it.’ There was no such natural inclination conveyed for academic assessment.

Emotions

Emotions were an important element of assessment experiences in both sport and academic domains with participants describing stress, worry, nervousness, anxiety, frustration, as well as happiness, excitement, and relief. The emotions could be classified according to Pekrun’s control-value model (2006, 2023) as anticipatory and retrospective emotions, suggesting that the whole assessment process from preparation to outcomes has emotional elements. For example, in discussing an exam assessment in school, Ally explained that ‘I did feel confidence for most of it, which is good. I felt a bit worried, I felt a bit, you know, of acute stress every once in a while.’ Similarly, in sport Steph admitted to feeling ‘a bit worried that I wasn’t in great shape’ prior to a running test. Joe explains that ‘I find I get really anxious at the start of a game’ the same way that Brianne admits to being ‘a little bit anxious because I wanted to get the highest grade.’ Such descriptions show how the outcome of an assessment, or anticipation of such outcomes, has an emotional element.

Participants’ retrospective emotions also depended on getting through the assessment or the outcome of the assessment. For example, in the experience of writing a midterm exam, Ally explained ‘I’d read over it and I’d calm down, and feel okay about it’ the same way that Nina described a mix of retrospective emotions including: ‘relief or happiness depending on how it went. You know, it could also come with some disappointment for sure. I've taken lots of assessments that you’re like “oh man, I did not do as good as I thought I was going to do!”’

The athletes’ emotional responses were also tied to their relationships with the instructor and the coach. For example, coaches seemed to be more direct, intentional, and personal with assessment. Brianne explained the direct assessment feedback from her coach during physical testing in soccer: ‘and then when we got into the testing the coach was like no you have to do better, you just have to do better, you know? She was like straight up you have to do better.’ In contrast, Nina said that ‘Even though, you know you’re getting individual feedback on course assessments, it feels a lot more personable with the sports setting because you’re on a team–because you’ve developed all these personal relationships with the people around you and the coaches as well.’ Overall, participants conveyed that coaches were closer to them and that made the assessments feel more familiar and positive.

Mixed-methods strand

Three mixed insights are presented, one pertaining to each of COA, perceived control, and emotions, in a side-by side joint display in Table 3.

Table 3. Side-by-side joint display of mixed-methods interpretation.

	Quantitative findings	Qualitative findings	Mixed insights
Conceptions	Sport assessment is more irrelevant and more fun than academic assessment	Function/utility distal outcomes broad consequences	Immediate-Future: The consequences of academic assessment extend beyond a specific course making it more relevant for the future than assessment in sport which has narrower future implications and feels linked to an immediate athlete identity.
Perceived control	No difference between sport and academic assessment	Effort preparation motivation	Head-Heart: Although perceptions of control regarding academic and sport assessment are similar in terms of requiring preparation and effort, the natural motivation to do so is easier in sport.
Emotions	Academic assessment has more anger, helpless, and relief than sport	Anticipatory retrospective relational	Negative-Positive: Academic assessments elicit strong negative emotions while sport assessment is pleasant and rooted in close relationships.

Concerning student-athletes’ COA, sport and academic assessments were conceived of similarly in terms of both internal and external accountability, but sport assessment was viewed as both more irrelevant and more fun than academic assessment. This distinction was also evident in the correlations with assessment conceived as irrelevant and fun significantly negatively being correlated in the sport domain (r = −.36, p < .05) and uncorrelated in the academic domain (r = −.01, p > .05). The qualitative results help explain this pattern, in part, because participants described perceiving academic assessment as having longer term consequences for the future than sport, which implies greater relevance. Academic assessment was attached to various other indicators of success that extend beyond a single course allowing participants to describe it as more relevant than assessment in sport which can belong to more immediate consequences in a precise domain. For example, participants considered academic assessment as linked to ‘their future’ whereas assessment in sport was linked to ‘the moment’ with notable differences in the magnitude of impact. Nina said ‘[academic assessment is] a lot more focus forward and how it’s going to impact me in the future, where I feel like [sport] nerves is kind of in the heat of the moment for me.’

There were no quantitative differences in terms of perceived control and in many ways participants’ qualitative descriptions showed high levels of convergence with the numbers in that assessments in both domains necessitated effort and preparation. Likewise, the correlations showed a negative association between assessment as irrelevant and perceived control in both domains. In other words, participants were well aware and able to communicate how they maintained perceived control related to assessments. For example, Nina said:

‘I think they’re similar in the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s your performance being evaluated and even though–even if you are on a team and, you know, you see the wins and the losses and the whatever, at the end of the day you can control what you do and how you improve in both those–course work and sport.’

However, participants did have nuanced differences in their overall approach to investing effort and preparation that is not revealed in the quantitative results: they were more genuinely or naturally motivated to invest effort and prepare for assessment in sport than in the academic domain. This finding is particularly interesting in light of their admissions that the consequences of academic assessment matter more than in sport. Melanie explained that:

‘Whereas in school you kind of feel like I have to do good. I want to be motivated so I can have a good career so just different, yeah, motivations behind it. But I find sports a lot easier to be motivated for because you love it, because you have that passion for it–it’s just–they’re very different.’

The qualitative results also show that the scope of impact of assessment can help explain why anger, helplessness, and relief were all quantitatively greater in response to academic assessment than sport. Emotions were related to the way participants described the different impact of assessment in their lives. For example, Nina said:

‘When I think of nerves, I think of definitely more sport-related–the kind of calming of those jittery feelings of ‘oh my gosh, I'm ready to go–I'm ready to go…’ but I also need to like focus in. Where the anxiety of the course work kind of just…I see the broader picture ahead…. For the test, it’s just kind of…you.’

In contrast with the quantitative differences that show assessment as eliciting higher emotion scores in response to academic assessment, the qualitative descriptions conveyed heightened emotions such as passion and excitement when talking about sport assessment.

Discussion

The present study sought to address an omission in achievement research to explore assessment perspectives of student-athletes who are regularly assessed in both sport and academic domains. The three mixed insights about Canadian student-athletes’ experiences of assessment are discussed and implications for student-athletes, instructors, and coaches involved in collegiate sport are offered.

Immediate-future conceptions

Regarding conceptions of assessment (COA), the mixed insights revealed that student-athletes explained how academic assessment has broad, future-focused consequences that extend beyond a specific course whereas sport assessment is often narrower, contained, and immediate. This helps explain how assessment in sport could be conceived of quantitatively as both more irrelevant and more fun – a pairing that without the qualitative data may seem somewhat counterintuitive. These individuals may be drawing on their current roles as athletes, which might explain why sport COA appeared to have a very immediate influence that relates more directly to their sport in the moment. Since sport assessment may have less long-standing influence over one’s future, it could be considered more enjoyable while being less relevant. For this particular sample, academic assessment offers no such opportunity to be ignored because the results of summative assessments have real implications for future life outcomes (e.g. graduation, careers). In fact, research on students’ conception of assessment in earlier ages (e.g. primary and middle school) suggest a possible trend toward negativity of academic assessment, perhaps linked to being made more aware of the future consequences of the assessment such as graduation (Brown & Harris, 2012; Wheelock et al., 2000).

For coaches and instructors, this means that student-athletes’ expectations of assessment may differ by domain. Instructors are recommended to carefully attend to the future implications their assessments have for students. Coaches could think about integrating assessments that may have longer term implications so athletes see their relevance (e.g. a running program they can continue to use once their sport season ends). This may help athletes conceive of such assessments as guides for how to integrate training beyond their sport season, and may even help with some of the difficulty that comes with high-level athletes transitioning out of sport (Hattersley et al., 2019; Lally, 2007).

Control from head-heart

Quantitatively there was no difference in perceptions of control concerning assessment in either the sport or academic domains. Moreover, participants described how effort and preparation were needed for assessment in both domains. This finding may suggest that athletes learn strategies or habits that are beneficial across domains, and may help explain some studies where sport participation is associated with higher academic outcomes (Aquino & Reyes, 2022; Shiraz & Ershad, 2020; Wretman, 2017).

However, there was a stark difference in how easy it was to muster the necessary effort in sport compared to school. In short, it seemed that perceptions of control in the academic domain required investment from the head; whereas, perceptions of control in the sport domain flowed from the heart. The former was more logical, cognitive, and rational. The latter was more intuitive, bodily, and spontaneous. This reflects a natural distinction between sport and academic domains. Physical activity has long been recommended as a means to manage stress and increase mental health. Although somewhat contested, one reason for this may be because exercise releases a number of neurotransmitters including endorphins, endocannabinoids, and dopamine which serve to reinforce the activity, minimize pain, and elevate mood (Dishman & O'Connor, 2009). The sedentary nature of traditional academic assessment does not have the same advantage in terms of generating motivation neurologically.

One aspect instructors could borrow from the sport context is the importance of movement not only during learning but during assessment. For example, Medina (2011) suggests that the number one Brain Rule is exercise. Indeed, Medina goes so far as to state that ‘physical activity is cognitive candy’ (p. 31) because it brings blood to the brain. He recommends that children in compulsory schooling have recess twice a day and use bikes, treadmills, and yoga balls during class. Similar ideas could be added to university level courses where students can be invited to change seats halfway through class or to stretch. However, how precisely to link activity to classroom assessment may require a bit more thought. Perhaps instructors could have the first five minutes before a test be for some form of physical movement before students even begin. For instructors who cannot carve time out of testing situations for movement, leveraging intrinsic motivation may be another way to gain similar neurological advantages.

Negative-positive emotions

The quantitative results showed that student-athletes reported feeling more anger, helplessness, and relief regarding academic assessment than sport assessment. Compared to their sport assessments, student-athletes may feel more negative emotions concerning their academic assessments up until they are finished and then more relief thinking about the aversive assessment period being finished.

The finding that athletes conceived of their assessments in sport as more fun may, in part, help explain why they feel less relief after sport assessment since there is not the same desire for the assessment to conclude. In control-value theory (Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun et al., 2023), the emotion of relief is posited to occur when a student’s anticipation of a poor result does not occur. Speculatively, this could also suggest that student-athletes’ anticipation for optimal results in their sport assessments are valued higher and not achieved as often to elicit greater relief following the outcomes.

In addition, emotions like excitement and passion were only used to describe sport assessment. Daniels and Gierl (2017) note that ‘specific comparisons of mean levels of discrete emotions are difficult because endorsements may depend on the wording of items … and thus must be treated cautiously’ (p. 30). To reinforce this comparison, participants’ narratives helped explain that the pleasant emotions in sport assessment could be rooted in closeness to their coach or team, something that was not mentioned in the academic domain. This may not be all that surprising since a few sport studies evidence the importance of belongingness in sport, as well as athlete-coach relationships, in terms of promoting positive emotions (Magrum & McCullick, 2019; Stenseng et al., 2015). Thus, the fundamental social need of belonging to a team can be emotionally adaptive for student-athletes.

Instructors could consider designing assessments that provide choice in project topics that excite students, or offering options to work as a team, which may help boost adaptive emotions in academic assessments for student-athletes. Furthermore, given the frequency of anxiety-related emotions such as stress, worry, nervousness, and butterflies–described for both domains in the interviews, such emotions in access can be debilitating for performance in both academic (Thomas et al., 2017) and sport domains (Palazzolo, 2020). Coaches and instructors working with student-athletes could keep in mind the doubling up of anxiety-inducing assessment experiences student-athletes deal with in their semesters. They could be encouraged to schedule check-ins with student-athletes and provide resources, access to support, or even intervention if feeling overburdened with assessments (Huntley et al., 2019). Furthermore, they could be encouraged to support the cross-domain activities. In other words, instructors could show interest in students’ sport-activities and coaches could show support for students’ school-related activities.

This study has implications for stakeholders in collegiate sports seeking to enhance the unique experiences of student-athletes in postsecondary education. In the United States, efforts by programs are being made to enrich the environments for collegiate student-athletes to be successful in sport and the classroom but there are questions on how effective such programs are (see Comeaux & Crandall, 2019). Understanding how sport and academic assessment is nuanced in terms of conceptions, perceptions of control, and emotions may be beneficial for collegiate athletic programs that offer supports in academic mentoring, career advising, and first-year orientations, etc. For instance, placing emphasis on programs to support some of the negative emotions ensuing from academic assessments or introducing dialogue around incorporating more movement in traditional classroom settings may be an important stride toward supporting athletes for success as scholars, and athletes, in collegiate sport.

Limitations and direction for future research

The results herein need to be considered in light of two limitations regarding measurement and sampling. First, an aim of the study was to understand differences in student-athletes’ perceptions of assessment across sport and academic domains by considering their COA, perception of control, and emotions. Despite the fact these three constructs separately have been used in research with students and athletes, only the COA scale was designed for assessment, and specifically academic-based assessment. Parallel forms for all measures across the two domains were created, but these scales were not pilot tested. Although COA and perceived control in the sport domain demonstrated acceptable to good reliability, future research could involve more formal validation processes (e.g. Parker et al., 2023). Additionally, single items were used to measure emotions. Although this precludes being able to calculate reliability scores, researchers have shown that emotions can be adequately measured by single items (Gogol et al., 2014) and this decision was beneficial to avoid survey fatigue that could have occurred by asking participants to complete all items in both domains (Field, 2020).

Second, a snowball sampling technique was utilized to recruit athletes from Canadian universities into Phase 1. We acknowledge our study may be at risk of self-selection bias and our findings are reflective of only student-athletes who had an interest to participate in this research. Further, the recruitment process was much more difficult than anticipated and required sustained effort. Very few participants indicated a willingness to participate in Phase 2. As a result, all participants who indicated an interest in the qualitative portion of the study were invited to participate regardless of their scores on the quantitative measures. Consequently, the recruitment technique resulted in a predominantly white and female sample, and thus, it is important to consider the mixed-methods results with this in mind. Recruiting larger quantitative and representative samples with more purposive sampling for the qualitative strand would allow researchers to explore students’ perspectives based on specific quantitative profiles and also help reduce sampling bias.

Conclusion

This is the first empirical study simultaneously considering motivation-based assessment perspectives in sport and academic domains. The current study describes the multiple aspects involved in Canadian student-athletes’ experiences of assessment. The mixed insights show the relevance of sport and academic assessment consequences, the natural motivation and effort for sport assessment, and the differences in negative and positive emotions characterizing each domain. These findings help illustrate meaningful nuances in the assessment experience in university that are unique to the dual roles of student-athletes. In addition, the findings pertaining to student-athletes’ COA, control, and emotions can help both instructors and coaches alike learn how to improve assessment practices in ways that can benefit students and athletes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data can be made available at request. Data and plan of analysis have been pre-registered on the Open Science Framework.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of a larger initiative to understand the assessment experience of individuals with exceptional circumstances (led by Dr. Lia Daniels). This work was supported by a Killam Cornerstone Grant awarded to the third author and the funding source had no other role other than financial support.

Notes on contributors

Patti C. Parker

Dr. Patti C. Parker (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Thompson Rivers University. Her research interests include motivation and psychosocial factors in education, sport, and health settings.

Lauren D. Goegan

Dr. Lauren D. Goegan (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Educational Administration, Foundations, and Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Her research interests include the transition to and successful completion of postsecondary education, often using a motivation theoretical lens in her work.

Lia M. Daniels

Dr. Lia M. Daniels (PhD) is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta. Her research interests focus on student and teacher motivation and emotions across all levels of schooling with the intention of creating supportive learning environments.

Notes

1 As this mixed-methods study unfolded, the research team deviated from the pre-registered plan in three important ways: (1) they recruited a smaller sample size (n = 77) than planned (n = 100); (2) they did not purposefully sample from the quantitative strand to conduct the qualitative analysis due to low response rates; (3) to manage schedules, they used a combination of focus groups and individual interviews. No changes were otherwise made to the pre-registered plan of analysis.