Date of Award

2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

School of Education

Abstract

The purpose of the current research was to examine racial, male and athletic identities and their individual and collective impact on the academic performance of African American male Division I student-athletes (AAMSAs). Data was collected using the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI), the Male Role Norms Scale (MRNS), and the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS). The MIBI is a measure of racial identity and is comprised of seven subscales: (1) centrality, (2) private regard, (3) public regard, (4) assimilation, (5) humanist, (6) minority, and (7) nationalist. The MRNS takes status, toughness and antifemininity into account to calculate a masculinity score. Finally, athletic identity can be measured by the AIMS, which attempts to quantify the level of importance and centrality athletics has in a person's life. Academic performance was measured by a student's self-reported GPA.

The aim of the study was to gather data that will better inform the work of athletic academic advisors (AAA) in the hope that it will allow the profession to best serve the AAMSA population. The goal was to determine if a link exists between any of the identities of interest and academic performance and what, if anything, AAAs need to know based upon the results. The stated purpose of this research was explored using two primary research questions:

1. To what extent are measures of racial, male, and athletic identities (MIBI, MRNS, and AIMS) psychometrically sound when used with a sample of AAMSAs?

2. To what extent do racial, male and athletic identities influence AAMSA's academic performance above and beyond what is accounted for by demographic variables?

The goal of this research was to determine if these non-cognitive factors impact the academic performance of AAMSAs in order to further inform the work of athletic academic advisors as they seek to increase the retention and graduation of this population.

The following four hypotheses were tested:

1. Black racial identity, as measured by the MIBI, will have various relationships with academic performance based on the subscales of the MIBI. High public and private regard scores will be positively related to academic performance. Nationalist and oppressed minority ideologies will have a negative relationship to academic performance while the assimilation and humanist subscales will be positively related. Centrality will have a curvilinear relationship with academic performance.

2. Male identity, as measured by the MRNS, will be negatively related to academic performance.

3. Athletic identity, as measured by the AIMS, will be negatively related to academic performance.

4. The combination of racial identity, athletic identity and male identity will be a stronger predictor of academic performance than any one of the variables individually. Depending on the various combinations of racial ideology, regard and centrality, the relationship between racial identity and academic performance may be positive or negative.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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