Student-athletes, academic achievement and self-esteem.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between high school interscholastic athletic team participation and self-esteem when considering three indexes of academic achievement. A self-report student survey was designed to elicit demographic and academic achievement information, including gender, ethnicity, grade point average, number of missed school days, and number of behavioral referrals during the last school year. Additionally, the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem Scale and the Savin-Williams and Demo (1983) Self-Esteem Inventory were incorporated to measure levels of self-esteem. The sample included 477 seniors from two comprehensive high schools in southwest Arizona, evenly split across gender and athletic status (participant and non-participant). Analyses of the data indicated that both the Rosenberg and Savin-Williams self-esteem measures yielded similar results in that males scored significantly higher than females on the self-esteem measures, and that students participating in high school interscholastic athletics scored significantly higher than did non-participating students. In examining the data when considering the indexes of academic achievement, females, on average, have higher GPA's than males, and high school athletes have significantly higher GPA's than their non-participating peers. Results also reported that males miss fewer school days than females, and athletic participants miss significantly fewer school days than non-participants. Additionally, on average, males receive more behavioral referrals than females, and again, athletic participants scored significantly better than non-participants as they also receive fewer behavioral referrals. In knowing that self-esteem differences exist, additional analyses focused upon the indexes of academic achievement while controlling for these known self-esteem differences. Results indicated that when factoring out the self-esteem differences the same results were maintained. Students participating in high school athletics have higher self-esteem scores, maintain higher grade point average, miss fewer school days, and receive fewer behavioral referrals.