Sense of Belonging and Burnout Among First-year Student-Athletes

Abstract

Evidence for the importance of a sense of university belonging and its link to students' positive self-perceptions of social acceptance and scholastic competence have been supported in the literature (Freeman, Anderman & Jensen, 2007; Pittman & Richmond, 2008). However, sense of belonging at the university level specifically as it relates to student-athletes has not been fully explored in the literature. In addition, due to the fact that student-athletes have to perform both academically and athletically, they are often faced with demanding schedules (Raedeke, Lunney & Venables, 2002) and in many instances, it is their academic performance that suffers. Considering the unique position that student athletes are placed in- that of being a student and an athlete, it is important to assess how their sense of belonging and burnout affect their graduation expectations. The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between student-athletes' sense of belonging and burnout as associated with graduation expectations. The research question examined was whether there was a significant difference between student-athletes who expect to graduate and those who do not as associated with their ratings of sense of belonging and burnout. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Results indicate that sense of belonging and burnout has an impact on the student-athlete's expectation to graduate among first year student-athletes. Sense of belonging however emerged as being more salient in its effect on expectation to graduate than burnout.