Merged identity of student-athletes and achievement goals across school and sport

ABSTRACT

Student-athletes balance two demanding roles as students and athletes. The current study tested whether student-athletes that saw these roles as merged (i.e. merged identity) were more likely to have similar motivation for school and sport. Collegiate student-athletes (N = 76) completed online surveys assessing merged identity (using a novel measure with pictorial and open-ended response elements) and achievement goals. Cluster analyses identified students with similar motivational profiles in academics and athletics. Students higher on the merged identity measure were more likely to report matching motivational profiles. Results shed light on the role identity plays in student-athletes’ motivation across domains.

KEYWORDS:

• Student-athletes
• identity
• achievement goals
• motivation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Leslie Barnes and Brad Berndt for helping to encourage student-athletes to participate in the research. We also thank Rick Hoyle for his help in starting this project and his continuous support of his students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael M. Barger received his PhD in developmental psychology at Duke University and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Miray D. Seward is a doctoral student in Educational Psychology, Applied Developmental Science at the University of Virginia.

ORCID

Michael M. Barger http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1192-7122

Notes

1 We used items 5, 17, 18, 25, and 29 from Gaston-Gayle’s (2005) measure. These items were not originally designed to create one scale. Instead they were selected because of the prioritization aspect of merged identity. Each of these items in some way compares the importance of athletics and academics.