Annotated Bibliography
Beyond the Black/White Binary: A Multi-Institutional Study of Campus Climate and the Academic Success
of College Athletes of Different Racial Backgrounds
Leticia Oseguera Pennsylvania State University
Dan Merson Dan Merson Academic & Research Consulting
C. Keith Harrison University of Central Florida
Sue Rankin Rankin & Associates Consulting
This work contributes to an understanding of college athletes’ experiences with campus climate and its relationship to perceptions of their academic success. This work extends race work to include Latina/o and Asian and Pacific Islander college athlete populations across multiple divisions and sports as the literature is scarce on college athletes of color beyond the Black/White binary and high profile sports. The current paper fills a gap in the literature by applying the Student-Athlete Climate Conceptual Frame and quantitative research on college athletes of color, women college athletes and perceptions of campus climate and academic success. Our findings highlight a relationship between positive perceptions of campus climate and academic success. Participation in academic student organizations is also related to academic success.
According to some researchers, the lack of uniform standards and academic eligibility, in addition to the desire to field a winning team, created a trend of poorly educated students receiving colle- giate admission, thus decreasing overall academic standards (Benson, 2000; Edwards, 2000; Lapchick, 1995). Thelin (1996) offered that commercialism and professionalism are incompatible with traditional academic values. Similarly, Sack and Staurowsky (1998) and Sack (2009) suggested that athletic scholarships under- mined academic integrity. This trend of lower academic perfor- mance and outcomes may have less relevance today, but stereotypes of college athletes as dumb jocks with limited academic success persist (Sailes, 1993; Simons & Van Rheenen, 2000).
Consequently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) initiated policies and programs to respond to these negative perceptions of “athlete” first and “student” second. For example, the Academic Progress Rate (APR) was introduced that allows the NCAA to (a) track, on a semester by semester basis, every Division I athlete’s progress toward a degree by assigning points for staying in school as well as for maintaining eligibility, and (b) punish teams whose APR scores drop below a certain level through the loss of athletic scholarships (NCAA, 2014). In addition, the NCAA im- plemented the GOALS (Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations and Learning of Students in College) study in 2006, 2010, and 2015 to
examine the experiences and well-being of current college athletes. In the 2015 study, three-quarters of NCAAmen andwomen (slightly higher among women and in Division III) reported that their overall academic experience had been positive (NCAA, 2016).
The core purpose of the NCAA is to ensure positive athletic and educational experiences for all college athletes (Crowley, Pickle, & Clarkson, 2006). In 2011, over 450,000 college athletes participate in NCAA sponsored sports (Irick, 2013). Among these, there were 123,134 college athletes of color1 including 45,173 women college athletes of color and 77,961 men college athletes of color (NCAA, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c). Current research surrounding college athletes’ collegiate experiences, including the specific experiences of college athletes of color, is growing (Gayles & Hu, 2009; Harrison, 2002; Martin & Harris, 2007; Martin, Harrison, Stone, & Lawrence, 2010; Melendez, 2008; Oseguera, 2010; Singer, 2008) and suggests that in order to better understand the experiences of college athletes, attention must be focused not only on their involvement as students within higher education, but also upon their affiliation with athletic organizations or the broader campus climate (Harrison et al., 2009, 2010; Oseguera & Goldstein, 2015; Yopyk & Prentice, 2005).
Positive campus climates contribute to students’ academic performance, social adjustment, and interpersonal skill
Oseguera is with the Department of Education Policy Studies, Center for the Study of Higher Education, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Merson is with Dan Merson Academic & Research Consulting, Santa Cruz, CA. Harrison is with the College of Business Administration, Devos Sport Business Management Program, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL. Rankin is with Rankin & Associates Consulting, Howard, PA. Address author correspondence to Leticia Oseguera at oseguera@ psu.edu.
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Sociology of Sport Journal, 2018, 35, 119-131 https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2016-0175 © 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. ARTICLE
development while negative campus climates adversely affect these outcomes, particularly for marginalized social identity groups such as women and students of color (Navarro, Worthington, Hart, & Khairallah, 2009; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Students of different social groups experience the campus climate differently based on group membership and group status (Brown, Clarke, Gortmaker, & Robinson-Keilig, 2004; Navarro et al., 2009; Rankin & Merson, 2012; Rankin, Weber, Blumenfield, & Frazer, 2010; Strayhorn, 2013; Worthington, Navarro, Loewy, & Hart, 2008) but existing work has not examined the relationship between campus climate experiences and perceptions of one’s own academic suc- cess, separated by racial2 group. For the purpose of this study, campus climate is defined as the “current attitudes, behaviors and standards and practices of employees and students of an institution” (Rankin &Reason, 2008, p. 264) while academic success is defined as college athletes’ perceptions of academic and intellectual growth as a result of their collegiate experiences.
Background/Context of Problem
Several researchers suggest a positive connection between sports and academics. For example, Umbach, Palmer, Kuh, and Hannah (2006), using data from The National Survey of Student Engage- ment (NSSE), compared the collegiate experiences of college athletes with those of their non-athlete peers. They found that college athletes are at least as engaged in their institution overall, and in some areas are more engaged. In addition, college athletes reported that they perceived their campus environment to be more supportive of their academic and social needs, and they reported making greater gains since starting college in several areas. These findings are supported by other studies of college athletes (Harrison et al., 2009; Hildenbrand, Sanders, Leslie-Toogood, & Benton, 2009; Martin, Harrison, Stone, et al., 2010).
Other researchers offer a negative relationship between par- ticipation in intercollegiate sports and academics, but only focused on the Black/White binary and excluded other groups in their analyses (Adler & Adler, 1985; Maloney & McCormick, 1993; Purdy, Eitzen, & Hufnagel, 1982). Most of the previous research had focused on African American men athletes, in Division I, revenue-generating sports. This line of research primarily indicates that athletic participation negatively affects students’ academic performance (Benson, 2000; Edwards, 2000; Johnson, Hallinan, & Westerfield, 1999; Person & Lenoir, 1997). Still, others suggest that college athletes “suffer from negative stereotyping from their non-athlete peers, faculty, and even student affairs professionals” (Harman &Bich, 2010, p. 28). Negative stereotypes have produced an identity threat for college athletes, who perform worse academ- ically when they perceive this stereotype (Bimper, 2014; Harrison et al., 2009; Stone, Harrison, & Mottley, 2012; Yopyk & Prentice, 2005). However, when athletic identity is made salient, men college athletes perform better than women college athletes aca- demically in a testing situation (Harrison et al., 2009). This suggests that college athletes’ experiences on campus are complex, and that the ways in which campus climate and college athlete status contribute to academic performance are in need of further empirical investigations (Brown et al., 2003).
Much of the previous work on campus climate and academic success has been qualitative and centered on the personal experi- ences and perceptions of African American men college athletes (Agyemang, Singer, & DeLorme, 2010; Comeaux, 2010; Griffin, 2017; Lawrence, 2005), men college athletes in general (Schrack- Walters, O’Donnell, & Wardlow, 2009) and African American
women college athletes (Bruening, Armstrong, & Pastore, 2005; Carter & Hart, 2010). One notable exception of campus climate work was initiated by the NCAA and conducted by the American Institutes for Research in the late 1980’s. This seminal study examined Black and non-Black college athletes’ experiences at Division I HBCUs and PWIs. Among the results was the finding that academically underprepared college athletes (more often Black students) were recruited for their athletic abilities as opposed to being recruited for their academic prowess. The study revealed that Black college athletes at HBCUs were less likely to express feelings of being different from others, less likely to report experiences with racial isolation, and more likely to report having control over their lives compared to their Black and non-Black peers at PWIs.
Still roughly 20% of college athletes identify as a racial group other than Black or White (NCAAOffice of Inclusion, 2016). When Latina/o, AsianAmerican, Pacific Islander, or multi-racial groups are included in large data-based studies they are sometimes collapsed into an “other” category, or the baseline data have less than ideal representation of these racial identities to draw any meaningful conclusions. The majority of the work on Latino college athletes has focused on their experiences in baseball (Burgos, 2007; Regalado, 1998). This gap in the literature was noted by Person, Benson-Quaziena, and Rogers (2001) over a decade ago and still exists today. They highlighted the need to focus on campus climate for diverse college athletes and asserted that campus personnel “need to understand how to help the student find ways to engage in the cultural community for strength and support” (p. 60). They also go on to state that understanding climate is “a serious issue and could easily be dismissed if one does not acknowledge the importance of culture for many students of color” (p. 60).
The current study is a secondary data analysis of the Student Athlete Climate Study (SACS) data that included over 8,400 student responses from 164 NCAAmember institutions including over 1,300 college athletes of color. Athletes of color are defined as any college athlete who self-identified into a racial or ethnic group other than mono-racial White. This includes Native Amer- ican, Pacific Islander, Asian, African American/Black, Latina/o/ Hispanic, and those that identified with more than one racial group. The work contributes to an understanding of college athletes’ of color experiences with campus climate and how that influences their academic success and this work extends race work to include other racial groups including Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander, and multi-racial college athlete populations, as well as gender work as it includes responses of over 5,300 women college athletes across Division I, II, and III. The aim of this work is to better understand the relationship between campus climate experiences and perceptions of one’s own academic success, parsed out by racial groups, to better support the ex- periences of all college athletes. The research questions guiding this study are: What is the relationship between college athletes’ perceptions of campus climate and their academic success? How do these relationships differ across college athletes of different racial backgrounds?
Review of Literature
This literature review is organized into two main areas related to academic outcomes: 1) campus climate experiences; and 2) factors related to academic performance of college athletes. Where college athlete literature was sparse we included literature on the general student body on campus.
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Campus Climate and Student Outcomes
Two decades of research that focused primarily on the campus climate for historically excluded groups such as women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBT individuals (Brown et al., 2004; Worthington et al., 2008) has led to the emergence of a major theme: historically advantaged groups such as White people, men, and heterosexual people express more positive views of the campus climate while historically disadvantaged groups perceive the cam- pus climate more negatively (Norris, 1992; Rankin & Reason, 2005; Worthington et al., 2008).
Reid and Radhakrishnan (2003) examined the perceptions of racial and academic climate as possible mediators of racial differ- ences in the perception of the university’s general campus climate and found that “racial minority students, most notably African Americans and Latinos, were predicted to report more negative perceptions of general campus, racial, and academic climate than White students” (p. 267). Further, students of color who perceived their college environments as racially tense had lower levels of a sense of belonging to the campus community (Hurtado& Carter, 1997). A decade later, perceptions of the campus racial climate continued to strongly influence the sense of belonging in minority college students (Johnson et al., 2007). Several other empirical studies reinforce the importance of the perception of non- discriminatory environments to positive learning and developmen- tal outcomes (Aguirre & Messineo, 1997; Flowers & Pascarella, 1999; Whitt, Edison, Pascarella, Terenzini, & Nora, 2001). Pascar- ella and Terenzini (2005), in their comprehensive review of student outcomes literature, concluded that attending a HBCU is related to greater educational attainment, academic self-image, and cognitive development for African American students. Although causal connections are difficult to identify, HBCUs appear to positively influence outcomes for Black students because “black colleges provide a social-psychological environment more conducive to Black students’ social integration and personal development than do predominantly white colleges” (p. 601).
Other studies have identified the deleterious effects of dis- criminatory environments (Cabrera, Nora, Terenzini, Pascarella, & Hagedorn, 1999; Feagin, Vera, & Imani, 1996; Pascarella, 1985). Cabrera and his colleagues found statistically significant relationships between students’ perceptions of racism on campus and their (a) academic and social experiences, (b) academic success, (c) institutional commitment, and (d) persistence. These relationships between perceived campus environment and student outcomes held for both Black and White students, with the exception of the relationship with social experiences. Basi- cally, the perception of a campus climate as racist negatively influenced the academic experiences, academic success, institu- tional commitment, and persistence of both Black and White undergraduates.
Among work examining Asian American students, Cress and Ikeda (2003) predicted and found that Asian American students had a negative campus climate experience by observing stages of depres- sion and psychological disturbances. The findings were tied to student performance, where grades were lower for students with poor self-concept. These students were asked to report times they felt down, were depressed, felt prejudice, or were treated differently because of race, sex, or background. A positive correlation was found between Asian Americans’ reported stages of depression and the negative perceptions they encountered on college campuses.
Additional literature suggests that climate influences a stu- dent’s degree of engagement with their learning. Salter and Persaud (2003) examined the classroom climate for 142 women
enrolled in either education or engineering courses to explore how classroom climate encouraged (or discouraged) participa- tion. Women who reported a better “fit” with the classroom environment participated at higher levels than did women who experienced less of a fit. The findings reinforce previous work by the same authors. Not surprisingly, other students who feel unsupported by their environment may also have difficulty. Emerging work that addresses climate perception differences between men and women college athletes and academic success does suggest men and women experience the climate differently, but has yet to examine this by separate racial groups (Hoffman, Rankin, & Loya, 2016; Rankin et al., 2016).
Factors Related to Academic Performance: Collegiate Athletes
We first present literature on background characteristics such as family socioeconomic status and social identities such as race and gender. We then discuss literature on institutional classifications such as NCAA division, featured sport, and class standing. We follow with within college experiences and actual academic per- formance, delineating cognitive versus non-cognitive performance when applicable.
The initial academic background of college athletes plays a large part in their overall academic success. Socioeconomic status shapes family resources, extracurricular activity participation, and household culture, which all influence educational success (Martin, Harrison, & Bukstein, 2010; Upthegrove, Roscigno, & Zubrisnky, 1999). Parents’ level of education tends to have a positive influence on achievement and, in a college athlete’s career, early achieve- ments set the stage for success. Maloney and McCormick (1993) examined the academic records of college athletes at Clemson University and concluded that a student’s high school performance has a significant impact on his or her success which continues through the rest of the college career: “good grades breed good grades” (Maloney & McCormick, 1993). This maintenance of college athletes’ academic performance prediction is still relevant today (Bimper, Harrison, & Clark, 2013).
Historically, women college athletes and White college ath- letes exhibited higher graduation rates than men college athletes and college athletes of color, respectively at all NCAA divisions, while college athletes in Division III schools graduated at higher rates than their counterparts in Division I or II (Watt & Moore, 2001). While women college athletes typically do not outperform their men counterparts on entrance exams, data gathered through the university records of 519 college athletes from a Division I institution suggest that White women nonrevenue athletes have the highest level of academic performance (Kiger & Lorentzen, 1986; Lapchick, 2016). Men college athletes, however, exhibit higher intellectual self-confidence in relation to test scores in comparison with women college athletes (Harrison et al., 2009). In a study of 7,821 college athletes and 49,407 general students from 395 four- year colleges and universities across Division I, II, III, and NAIA schools, Umbach et al. (2006) found that female college athletes are similar on an academic challenge measure to their non-athlete female peers and male colleges athletes in the study “are as challenged academically, interact with faculty as frequently, and participate as often in active and collaborative learning activities” (p. 718) as their male non-athlete peers. In terms of campus environment perceptions, both men and women college athletes felt more social and intellectual support than their general student- body peers and women college athletes reported more satisfaction
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than their non-athlete peers, but men college athletes reported less satisfaction with their overall college experience than the non- athletes did.
Asian American college athlete investigations have been limited because their identities are underrepresented in college athletics. Scholarship on Pacific Islanders is emerging but tends to be qualitative in nature. Recent research at the University of Southern California (Morita, 2013) indicates that Samoan American men college athletes in the featured sport of football face stereotypes, dream of playing professionally in the NFL, and come to campus often less academically prepared than other college athlete groups (including African American males in football). The majority of the work on Latino athletes has focused on professional baseball (Burgos, 2007; Regalado, 1998) and football (Aldama & Gonzalez, 2014). One notable exception is Harrison, Ochoa, and Hernandez’s (2013) work on two former Latino male college athletes who concluded that “attending to the needs of Latino student-athletes necessitates an approach that recognizes the importance of culture and the historical role sports participation has provided to access to higher education” (p. 373) and encouraged other researchers to unpack campus climate.
Examining division status differences and academic perfor- mance, Richards and Aries (1999) showed that college athletes graduate with GPAs that are similar to non-athletes within Division III schools, but there are slight differences among Division II and even greater grade average differences than non-athlete peers within Division I institutions. Literature also suggests that Division III college athletes are more integrated into their collegiate envi- ronment and have fewer expectations of a professional athletic career than those in Division I and II (Grites & James, 1986; Snyder, 1996; Stansbury, 2004).3 Umbach et al. (2006) also identified performance differences for different divisional statuses with men and women college athletes at Division III reporting greater gains in general education than college athletes at Division I or II schools. Relative to the general student body, women athletes performed comparably to women non-athletes while men college athletes reported greater gains than their non-athlete men peers. The above-mentioned studies primarily incorporated cognitive measures of performance (ie, grade point average) but we also included additional studies of non-cognitive measures of perfor- mance since our outcome captures perceptions of academic performance.
Potuto and O’Hanlon (2007) found that student athletes thrive in educational settings where they feel a sense of belonging and are satisfied with their overall college experiences. Simons and Van Rheenen’s (2000) study of 200 Division I college athletes primarily in nonrevenue sports found that if college athletes felt that they were exploited on campus, they also had lower GPA’s, which was exacerbated by participating in revenue versus nonrevenue sports. Simons and Van Rheenen measured in part the athletic- academic relationship in the university setting and point out that on campus the “dumb jock” stereotype is still present suggesting a poor climate for academic success. However, “academically suc- cessfully student athletes appear to be able to respond to the increased demands and transfer the qualities of hard work, disci- pline, and perseverance, traits necessary for successful athletic performance, to their academic lives” (p. 178). In another work related to non-cognitive factors and academic success, Simons, Van Rheenen, and Covington (1999) examined the achievement moti- vation of 361 Division I college athletes and found fear of failure and the relative commitment to athletic participation were found to play important roles in the academic motivation of athletes in both
featured and non-featured sports. This finding points to the fact that structural forces at the institution and cultural programs that empower and enable college athletes to adapt are paramount to a successful collegiate athletic experience. Given the importance of considering both cognitive and non-cognitive factors related to academic success, we include a cognitive measure of GPA (ie, current grade average) in our analyses as a control for our outcome measure of non-cognitive performance (ie, perceptions of academic success).
Research on engagement/involvement and subsequent aca- demic outcomes has been conducted with diverse student groups. Using the National Survey of Hispanic students, Hurtado and Carter (1997) found that members of religious clubs, the student government, and sport teams tended to have significantly higher levels of sense of belonging which then leads to higher academic performance. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Fresh- men, Fischer (2007) found that involvement in formal activities on campus contributed to greater academic success among Black and Hispanic students but was only marginally significant for Asians, and not significant for White students.
Research also suggests that differences in how non-athletes and college athletes perceive themselves may determine their level of involvement on college and university campuses, but if indivi- duals perceive poor campus climates, these individuals are also less likely to get involved in campus activities (Cress & Ikeda, 2003). Potuto and O’Hanlon’s (2007) study of 930 college athletes at 18 Division IA (revenue producing football programs) institutions, found that they had positive perceptions of their general college experience, balanced academics with athletics, and used competi- tive athletics to build character. More recently, Gayles and Hu (2009) analyzed data for twenty-one institutions and 440 first-year students, 121 of whom participated in spectator sports, and focused on four areas of engagement: faculty interaction, non-teammate interaction (ie, other students on campus), involvement in student groups, clubs/organizations, and other community or service type activities, and involvement in intellectual-related activities. They found that “student-athletes interact with students other than teammates more often than any other type of engagement and participate in student groups and organizations less often” (p. 104). They also found non-cognitive (affective) findings. Specifically, women in non-revenue sports interacted more with other students from the general student body and had a higher level of personal self-concept compared to the men in high-profile sports such as football and men’s basketball. Interestingly, for high-profile ath- letes, interacting with students beyond their teammates had a larger effect on their self-concept when compared to athletes in non- revenue generating sports, and positively influenced gains in learning and communication. Generally, involvement in on- campus activities and other extra-curricular activities positively influenced students’ of color perceptions of campus climate experiences (Comeaux, Speer, Taustine, & Harrison, 2011) and subsequent academic performance.
Conceptual Framework
Scholars have advanced a model of college athlete academic success (see Comeaux & Harrison, 2011) and while this model is useful when one is interested in athletic or academic identity, it does not integrate campus climate. Rankin et al. (2016) developed and tested a comprehensive model based on work by Smith et al. (1997), Rankin (2003), and Rankin and Reason (2008) that sug- gests that individual and institutional characteristics directly
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influence both how college athletes experience climate and a variety of educational outcomes unique to college athletes. At the same time, college athletes’ experiences of climate can also influence these educational outcomes. This framework, the Student-Athlete Climate Study (SACS) Conceptual Frame, advances that individual and institutional characteristics including demographic character- istics (eg, race, gender), characteristics unique to college athletes (eg, sport affiliation), and characteristics unique to the array of participating institutions (e.g., divisional classification), as well as climate constructs including measures of college athletes’ experi- ences, attitudes, and perceptions, and reports of institutional actions relevant to the campus, athletic department, and team climates are important to consider to better understand academic success, athletic identity, and athletic success. The authors found evidence of the effect of climate on all three of the college athletes’ outcomes (see Rankin et al., 2016). The SACS Conceptual Frame is useful when investigating the relationship between campus climate and college athlete academic success across racial groups.
Methodological Approach
Data Source and Sample
Of the 1,281 NCAA member institutions, 164 participated in the anonymous web-based SACS survey in the spring of 2010. Of the 56,965 college athletes at those institutions, 8,481 participated in the project, representing all NCAA Divisions and all 23 NCAA Championship Sports. Ratio estimation (Brick & Kalton, 1996) was used to develop weight adjustments on the characteristics of gender, race, academic class standing, and NCAADivision so as to make the data as representative as possible of the total sample, resulting in a weighted dataset of 8,018. The dataset was imputed to maintain sample size using the maximum likelihood estimation- based Expectation-Maximization (EM) data imputation method (Allison, 2003; Graham, 2009; Musil, Warner, Yobas, & Jones, 2002) in SPSS to account for item nonresponse.
For the purposes of this study, the race and ethnicity categories were recoded to produce variables representing mutually exclusive mono-racial groups, with a single separate multi-racial category. The “Asian/Asian American” (API) variable included Asian American, Pacific Islander, Filipino, and Hawaiian college athletes; “African/African American/Black” (Black) included those listed categories; “Latina/o/Hispanic” (Latina/o) included any college athlete who identified as Latina/o or Hispanic; and “Caucasian/ White” (White) included theWhite respondents. The “multi-racial” category was composed of any college athlete who indicated more than one racial/ethnic category. Native American, Alaskan Native, and Middle Eastern college athletes were removed from the dataset due to the small number of respondents who identified as such. The resulting weighted sample consisted of 6,073 White, 777 Black, 379 Latina/o, 215 API, and 522 multi-racial college athletes, for a total of 7,966.
We further limited the sample to students who reported any experience with the campus climate. There were some college athletes who reported they were unable to rate the climate or did not have any experience with the groups they were asked to report interactions with in the survey. “Not Applicable (N/A)” response options were available for college athletes who might not be familiar with the experiences of members of other social identity groups, or may not be knowledgeable of the existence of some groups on campus. Because of these understandable and important
reasons for “nonresponse,” the N/A responses were not imputed and were excluded from the study as we were interested primarily in the relationship between college athletes’ reports of their campus climate experiences and their subsequent perceptions of academic success. We ran a series of t-tests to compare those students who marked unable to rate by our outcome and our demographic background variables. Our findings (not shown) indicate that the academic performance of students by racial group who did not report experiences of their campus climate were not significantly different. This resulted in a final analytic sample size of 3,698 (2,831 White, 378 Black, 184 Latina/o, 80 API, and 225 multi- racial college athletes). The subsequent tables and analyses presented include responses of students who did report their experience with the campus climate.
Variable Selection
The independent variables in the analyses were selected based on the literature reviewed on academic performance and follow the conceptual frame used in the SACS study. One strength of the design is that we employ both cognitive (i.e., actual grade point average) and non-cognitive (i.e., perceptions of academic growth) measures of academic performance in our analyses. In order to examine the college athletes’ perceptions of their campus climate and how that influences their academic success we chose to focus on two general measures of climate (Perceptions of Personal and Institutional Climate; Perceptions of Respect) and one outcome from the SACS project (Academic Success). Future work by the authors will explore other SACS project outcomes. Each variable was examined and constructed during the Structural Equation Modeling process through Exploratory (DeVellis, 2003) and Con- firmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) (Kline, 2011) procedures, as described in detail in the project final report (Rankin et al., 2011) and a published journal article (Rankin et al., 2016). The factor scores were calculated from the CFA procedures, providing continuous metrics for estimating the path models (Kline, 2011; Rankin et al., 2011, 2016). Estimated using diagonally weighted least squares, these are deviation scores with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. Participants’ scores are based on how their responses deviate from the average.
The control variables used for these analyses were based on the literature on college athlete academic performance. The dichoto- mous individual and institutional characteristics included gender identity, the institution’s NCAA Division (I, II, or III), participation in an institution-designated “featured” or “non-featured sport,” any religious/spiritual affiliation compared to no identified affiliation, and organizational involvement variables. The organizational involvement variables were based on a series of questions asking college athletes what types of organizations they were involved with at their institution. The questions were condensed to three mutually exclusive dichotomous variables representing involvement in (a) only their Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), (b) any academic or honor society (debate team, pre-professional organizations, etc.), or (c) any other organization that is not academic or the SAAC. College athletes who were not involved in any organization comprised the reference group excluded in the regres- sion analyses. Other control variables included class standing, parental income, parental education, and grade point average within a range that corresponded to letter grades.
The climate variables included Perceptions of Personal and Institutional Climate and Perceptions of Respect. Perceptions of Personal and Institutional Climate included variables asking
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students to rate the campus, athletic department, and team on a number of climate-related dimensions such as religiously tolerant, non-sexist, tolerant of people of color, and other climate dimen- sions based on the extent to which these dimensions were perceived as being very respectful to very disrespectful. The Perceptions of Respect construct consisted of questions asking the student to report how respectful the climate was for individuals of various social identities (see Rankin et al., 2011, 2016 for complete measures).
The outcome variable of “Academic Success” was measured using Pascarella and Terenzini’s (1980) Academic and Intellectual Development subscale of their Institutional Integration Scale. This subscale focused on students’ academic development due to their collegiate experiences. It included questions such as “I am satisfied with the extent of my intellectual development since enrolling in this college/university,” “My interest in ideas and intellectual matters has increased since coming to this college/university,” and “I have performed academically as well as I anticipated I would,” and is measured at the end of the student’s current academic year. The Institutional Integration Scale or its subscales have been used in a variety of studies examining undergraduate student persistence (Milem & Berger, 1997; Pascarella, 1985; Pascarella & Chapman, 1983).
Analytic Strategy
We first performed descriptive analyses to establish a profile of college athletes involved in the study. We then used chi-square tests and Analysis of Variance to determine if there were differ- ences in demographic variables across racial categories. We used a series of hierarchical (also called blocked or sequential) regression analyses to examine first the perceptions of climate, and then the relationship of climate on the outcome, Academic Success. We conducted separate hierarchical regression analyses for the overall sample and each racial sub-sample. Hierarchical regression allows the researcher to determine the relative strength of influence of “blocks” of variables and how the addition of new variables into the model influences the effect of existing variables on the outcome (Howitt & Cramer, 2008).
Limitations
While there are multiple strengths to this work, it is important to acknowledge some limitations. First, we employ a college athlete’s perception of academic success at one time period and thus cannot guarantee a distinction between mere academic eligibility and actual academic performance. Other limitations include no exploration of differences in performance by academic majors or differences between scholarship and non-scholarship athletes. Also, our measures of perceptions of personal and institutional climate aggregate a college athlete’s perceptions of her/his interactions with multiple influential groups such as administrative support staff, coaches, and faculty, but we do not disaggregate the unique effects. Lastly, as numbers of college athletes continue to grow on a variety of campuses, future work might want to identify whether campus climate experiences differ markedly depending on institutional type as we primarily examined division status and featured sport status.
Results/Findings
We first present a portrait of the college athletes in this study across a number of demographic characteristics and college experiences. The
multivariate analyses are organized by the five racial sub-groups (White, Black, Latina/o, Asian Pacific Islander, and multi-racial) as well as one overall model where the racial groups are analyzed together. We then highlight some of the differences between these groups and the relationship to campus climate and these students’ subsequent reports of their perceived academic success.
Portrait of the College Athletes in the Sample
The aim of this work is to highlight racial differences in campus climate and academic success and begins with an overview of the racial differences in key study variables. Table 1 provides the means and standard deviations of the variables included in the model across each sub-sample. All of the results reported in this section are statistically significant.
Within each racial group, there was greater participation among Black men (relative to Black women) and API women (relative to APImen) college athletes. Similar proportions of students of different racial groups participated in Division I sports. However, differences surfaced among Division II and Division III participation. Slightly higher proportions of Black, Latina/o, API, and multi-racial college athletes participated in Division II sports compared to White college athletes. The patternwas reversed for Division III. Among the college athletes and featured sports participation, the majority participated in non-featured sports with Black college athletes’ participation in featured sports approximately twice the rate of the others. Multi- racial students were less likely to identify with a religious affiliation compared to other college athletes. We determined the proportion of college athletes involved in three different types of involvement experiences as well as college athletes who reported no involvement in campus activities: (a) Student Athlete Advisory Committees (SAAC); (b) academic involvement organizations; and (c) other involvement, non-athletic and non-academic related. For SAAC participation, the proportion of college athletes involved ranged from 4% (among Black college athletes) to 10% (among API college athletes), but these differences were not statistically significant. Those reporting involvement in academic organizations ranged from 6% (among Black college athletes) to 18% (among White college athletes). Those reporting involvement in other types of organizations ranged from 28% (among Black college athletes) to 35% (among White and API college athletes), but these differences were also not statistically significant. Still, a similar proportion of college athletes across all racial groups (roughly 45%), except Black college athletes (62%) reported no involvement of any kind on campus.
Because the climate and outcome variables are standardized measures, their scores are interpreted in relation to each other and in terms of standard deviations. The highest relative score on the academic success scale was among White college athletes (0.01), whereas the scores were almost a quarter of a standard deviation lower among Black college athletes (−0.19) and more than that for multi-racial college athletes (−0.28). A similar pattern existed for perceptions of respect, withWhite college athletes scoring −0.01 and Black college athletes’ scores a third of a standard deviation lower at −0.35. In terms of perceptions of personal and institutional climate, the lowest score was again among Black college athletes (−0.27) and multi-racial college athletes (−0.18), but the highest score was among Latina/o college athletes (0.11). White college athletes also scored one quarter of a standard deviation higher (−0.03) than Black college athletes (−0.27). This portrait highlights the broader purpose of the study. Namely, different racial groups experienced climate and institutional environments differently. The next section further investigates this phenomenon.
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Multivariate Results
Each of the full hierarchical regression models were significant and explained 22% to 37% of the variance in college athletes’ self- reported academic success (Table 2). Diagnostic analyses indicated that the models were appropriately specified and that residuals exhibited acceptable homoscedasticity and were not related to the other variables in the model. Coefficients from each of the full models are presented in Table 3.
Overall college athlete analyses. When all racial groups were combined in one model, a number of variables surfaced as related to academic success. Controlling for all other variables in the full
model, Black college athletes were more likely to report gains in academic success compared to their White peers. Men reported slightly higher scores than women. Division II and Division III college athletes also tended to report higher gains in their academic success than their peers at Division I colleges. Perhaps not surprising, with every grade level increase there was also an attendant increase in academic success scores. Similarly, as col- lege grade point average increased, so did a college athlete’s reported academic success. Parental education had a slight nega- tive relationship with academic success. That is, college athletes with lower levels of parental education levels tended to report higher levels of academic success. Perhaps there is a ceiling effect
Table 1 Means and Standard Deviations of Variables in the Models
All College Athletes (C-A) White C-A Black C-A
Latina/o C-A API C-A
Multi-racial C-A
Scale Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Academic Success
Deviation from grand mean −.03 .96 .01 .93 −.19 1.04 −.05 1.00 .01 .93 −.28 1.01
Gender
0 =men; 1 =women .41 .50 .44 .50 .24 .45 .41 .49 .51 .50 .40 .50
Division I
0 = no; 1 = yes .50 .50 .49 .50 .57 .50 .51 .50 .56 .50 .52 .50
Division II
0 = no; 1 = yes .21 .41 .18 .39 .34 .47 .30 .47 .25 .40 .26 .40
Division III
0 = no; 1 = yes .29 .45 .33 .47 .09 .31 .19 .35 .19 .44 .22 .42
Class standing
1 = freshman to 4 = senior or higher 2.27 1.13 2.27 1.13 2.26 1.16 2.37 1.13 2.17 1.05 2.19 1.18
Featured sport
0 = non-featured; 1 = featured .28 .44 .25 .43 .53 .50 .22 .41 .20 .37 .29 .45
Religiously affiliated
0 = no; 1 = yes .82 .38 .83 .38 .86 .35 .86 .35 .81 .45 .73 .42
What is your best estimate of your family’s yearly income?
1 = less than 30,000 to 7 = 200,000 or more 4.59 1.67 4.83 1.56 3.38 1.85 3.86 1.73 4.35 1.83 4.27 1.71
Parental education
1 = less than high school to 6 = graduate/professional degree
4.29 1.48 4.40 1.44 3.61 1.55 3.74 1.68 4.64 1.57 4.39 1.46
Current college GPA
1 =D or below to 9 =A 6.31 1.63 6.50 1.55 5.26 1.73 5.97 1.73 6.48 1.46 5.92 1.61
Organization involvement - SAAC only
0 = no; 1 = yes .06 .23 .06 .23 .04 .22 .07 .25 .10 .29 .07 .21
Organization involvement - Any Academic
0 = no; 1 = yes .16 .39 .18 .41 .06 .27 .16 .38 .10 .38 .11 .35
Organization involvement – Other
0 = no; 1 = yes .34 .48 .35 .48 .28 .45 .31 .46 .35 .49 .33 .48
Organization involvement – None
0 = no; 1 = yes .44 .49 .41 .48 .62 .49 .46 .50 .45 .48 .49 .50
Perceptions of personal & institutional climate
Deviation from grand mean −.06 .95 −.03 .92 −.27 1.12 .11 .83 −.09 .96 −.18 1.00
Perceptions of respect
Deviation from grand mean −.07 .98 −.01 .96 −.35 1.01 −.19 1.03 −.23 .98 −.17 1.04
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in that students with more highly educated parents tend not to report gains as they may have entered college already feeling self- confident in their academic and intellectual skills. In terms of the involvement block of variables, involvement with academic or- ganizations was positively related to academic success. Finally, both of the climate variables, perception of personal and institu- tional climate and perceptions of respect, were associated with higher scores on academic success.
White college athletes. Among White college athletes, the demographic variables related to higher academic success scores included class standing and family income. With each grade level increase, there was an increase in reported levels of academic success. Additionally, as family income rose, so did a White athlete’s report that they experienced an increase in their academic success. However, parental education was negatively related to
self-reported academic success. Higher grade point averages were also associated with higher reports of academic success. None of the variables in the student involvement block were significant. There was a strong relationship between White college athletes’ positive perceptions of personal and institutional climate and perceptions of respect and reported academic success.
Black college athletes. Among Black college athletes, four variables were significant in the model. The first was family income, which was negatively related to academic success scores. The higher the college grade point average, the higher reported gains in academic success among Black college athletes. Both climate variables were also significant. That is, among Black college athletes, reporting positive perceptions of personal and institutional climate as well as reporting perceptions of respect, both led to reporting greater academic success.
Table 2 Model Summary of Multivariate Analyses
All College Athletes (C-A) (N= 3,698)
White C-A (N= 2,831)
Black C-A (N= 378)
Latina/o C-A (N= 184)
API C-A (N= 80)
Multi-racial C-A (N= 225)
R R-squared R R-squared R R-squared R R-squared R R-squared R R-squared
1 .151*** .023 .145*** .021 .108** .012 .304* .092 .417 .174 .275* .075
2 .366*** .134 .381*** .145 .256** .066 .509*** .259 .420 .177 .423*** .179
3 .369*** .136 .382*** .146 .281*** .079 .554*** .307 .450 .202 .439*** .193
4 .480*** .230 .488*** .238 .492*** .242 .609*** .371 .568* .323 .466*** .217
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
Table 3 Multivariate Results by Race Groups
All College Athletes
White College Athletes
Black College Athletes
Latina/o College Athletes
API College Athletes
Multi-racial College Athletes
b b b b b b
African/African American/Black 0.154** – – – – –
Asian/Pacific Islander 0.096 – – – – –
Latina/o/Hispanic 0.029 – – – – –
Multi-racial (White = referent) −0.099 – – – – –
Woman −0.068* −0.039 −0.170 −0.163 0.318 −0.308*
Division II 0.095** 0.074 0.077 0.220 0.067 0.107
Division III (Division I = referent) 0.094** 0.067 0.318 0.057 0.352 0.376*
Class Standing 0.037 0.031* 0.030 0.059 0.095 −0.013
Featured sport status 0.040 0.021 0.153 0.123 0.283 0.018
Religiously affiliated 0.015 0.036 −0.033 −0.324 −0.065 0.271
Family income 0.005 0.028** −0.068* −0.054 −0.078 0.015
Parental education −0.021* −0.034** −0.001 0.066 0.017 0.012
Current college GPA 0.203*** 0.216*** 0.141*** 0.252*** 0.035 0.208***
Organizational involvement – SAAC only −0.117 −0.062 −0.155 −0.497 0.151 −0.292
Organizational involvement – Any academic 0.097* 0.081 0.393 −0.348 −0.109 0.334
Organizational involvement – Other (No involvement = referent)
0.004 0.030 −0.040 −0.422** −0.122 0.074
Perceptions of personal & institutional climate 0.252*** 0.247*** 0.326*** 0.227** 0.347** 0.117
Perceptions of respect 0.174*** 0.173*** 0.216*** 0.176** −0.055 0.108
R2 0.230*** 0.238*** 0.242*** 0.371*** 0.323* 0.217***
Note. b = beta, the unstandardized regression coefficient. This table contains results from each of the final models, not all blocks. *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
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Latina/o college athletes. Among Latina/o college athletes, four variables were significant. The higher the college grade point average, the higher reported gains in academic success among Latina/o college athletes. In addition, Latina/o college athletes’ involvement in organizations (other than SAAC or academic organizations) had a large negative relationship to self-reported academic success. More research into the types of involvement Latina/o college athletes are engaging in is necessary as general involvement had a negative relationship to academic success. The two climate variables were positively related to greater gains in academic success among Latina/o college athletes.
Asian and Pacific Islander college athletes. Among the API sample, only the final, full model was significant, and for only one variable. Perception of respect was positively related to reports of academic success. Surprisingly, none of the involvement variables entered despite a sizeable number of API’s reporting involvement in college activities nor did college grade point average enter despite high average grade point averages reported by the API population. The limited results are most likely due to the relatively small sample available for analysis.
Multi-racial college athletes. The final model on multi-racial students yielded a different pattern from any of the mono-racial group models. Multi-racial men were more likely to report gains in academic success than their multi-racial women counterparts. Division III multi-racial college athletes were also more likely to report gains in academic success than multi-racial college athletes in Division I colleges. Multi-racial students who reported higher college grade point averages also reported greater gains in academic success. The final climate block yielded no significant predictors.
Discussion/Conclusions
This paper is one of the first to examine the relationship between campus climate and academic success of college athletes of different racial backgrounds across multiple different institutional types. Our findings support the SACS framework which fore- grounds climate as critical to understanding college athlete experi- ences. In examining the findings related to the first research question under investigation, positive perceptions of climate were mostly related to reported gains in academic success. Climate experiences mattered in general, however the direction differed across racial groups, which was the second research question under investigation. Among the White, Black, and Latina/o sample, both climate variables were positively related to perceptions of aca- demic success. Only Perceptions of Respect was related to API’s perception of academic success and neither climate variable was significant for the multi-racial group. This study is an important first step in establishing the need for deeper investigation into the campus climate perceptions and academic success perceptions of different racial groups as some nuances arose between and within racial groups.
In returning to other racial differences that arose (or did not arise), parental education and parental income, which tend to be strong predictors of academic success and outcomes in the general student body population as we note in the literature review, surprisingly did not surface as significant factors in any of the analyses except for the White college athlete sample. Another important non-finding was that no gender differences emerged nor did any differences between college athletes of different racial groups in relation to their participation in featured or non-featured
sports. Again, the literature suggests that high profile college athletes are not as academically engaged, but our analyses do not lend any support to that assertion as there were no differences in the way featured sport or non-featured sport college athletes of different racial backgrounds reported their perceptions of growth in academic success. The other interesting non-finding for most of the analyses, except for White and Latina/o college athletes, pertains to the involvement variables. The general literature describes how greater involvement leads to gains in academic outcomes. This, again, only applied to the White sample. We did not uncover this relationship for any of the other racial sub-groups, except with the Latina/o college athletes where the general involvement variable was negatively related to academic success. One explanation might be that being involved in one’s sport might not afford extra time to become involved on campus but more investigation into involve- ment is needed.
In disaggregating by race groups, we uncovered differences in the perceptions of climate and later academic success. What is even more interesting is that this is likely a conservative estimate of climate as students were asked to report on their perceptions of the general climate. Future research should delve more deeply into a college athlete’s own experience and perception of the climate as it relates to their own social identities. Still, the results of this work highlight the attention one must put on the experiences of college athletes on college campuses as those that tended to report more respectful climates also tended to report higher agreement on measures of academic success.
General campus climate issues will continue to exist in American higher education. While engagement is important, the quality of engagement is more important and it takes a village of faculty, staff, administrators, coaches, and peer college athletes themselves to proactively make the environment conducive to multiethnic populations. More research is needed like the current study that moves beyond single-institution analyses. Some of the empirical patterns relevant to the White college athletes were not significant with college athletes of color and differences among the college athletes of color surfaced. The implications that parental education and parental income are not the strongest predictors of perceptions of academic success for college athletes of color means that non-cognitive factors such as perceptions of campus climate may be at play among all the racial groups; our findings support the importance of non-cognitive factors for college athletes as noted by Sedlacek and Adams-Gaston (1992), Gayles and Hu (2010), and Comeaux and Harrison (2011). Further, the engagement levels of featured-sport participants in the study did not negatively influence academic success, which challenges the revenue sport stereotype, especially for men of color. Finally, no gender differences were found except for the multi-racial group, which means that our strategies for best practices can merge gender identities in an inclusive way.
Intercollegiate athletics is an important part of the culture at many institutions of higher education. The literature suggests that participating in sports can benefit a student’s development while in college, but if the environment is not supportive, it could also impede it (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). The current study high- lights the important role that campus climate plays for the per- ceived academic success of college athletes. A positive campus climate requires on-going care and continuous improvement in the form of periodic assessment, along with visible and meaningful support for the people and resources that foster college athletes’ positive collegiate experiences. While each of these findings is interesting and may guide policy and practical decision-making
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within institutions and, specifically, athletic programs, it is impor- tant to note that the cultural fabric of an institution and unique aspects of each campus’s environment must be taken into consid- eration when considering action plans based on these findings.
Notes
1. Athletes of color include anyone not identifying as mono-racialWhite.
2. While we recognize that Latino/Hispanic is not a race classification, we nevertheless employ the term race/racial categories as it better reflects that we have aggregated pan-ethnic groups into single race categories.
3. It is possible that some of the non-difference found with Division III college athletes could be conflated with general institutional effects of attending smaller, private institutions that are qualitatively different from the schools that choose to join Division I (Coakely, 2015; NCAA, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c; Umbach et al., 2006).
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