Multidimensional Commitment of Intercollegiate Student-Athletes: Its Effects on Intention to Leave and Satisfaction

Abstract

<p>Given the importance and relative financial investments institutions formulate regarding student-athletes, intercollegiate coaches and administrators must make strategic decisions in recruiting and retaining them. A lack of student-athlete persistence is detrimental to individual teams and athletic departments as a whole; thus, every effort needs to be made to retain these individuals. Furthermore, Riemer and Chelladurai (1998) argue that the success of an intercollegiate athletic department should be, at least to some degree, based on the satisfaction of its student-athletes. An important first step in this regard is to understand the dynamics of student-athletes' continued participation with (or intention to leave) their institution and their satisfaction. Based on Meyer and Allen's (1991) multidimensional conceptualization of commitment (i.e., affective, normative, and continuance commitment), the purpose of this study was to (a) assess student-athlete commitment, (b) apply the multidimensional conceptualization of commitment to three relevant foci (i.e., coach, institution, and team), and (c) relate these components of student-athlete commitment to the student-athletes' intention to leave their current university and satisfaction (with their coach, with their university, and with their team). In addition, differences in levels of commitment were examined based on gender, rank (i.e., upper- vs. under-classmen), and playing status on the team (i.e., starter vs. non-starter).</p><p>Student-athletes from 11 team sports from a large, Division I-A, Midwestern university were selected to participate in this study (<i>n</i> = 190). Results of the study showed female student-athletes were significantly higher in their levels of commitment to their university and team, while male student-athletes were significantly higher in their affective commitment to their head coach. With regard to playing status, starters were significantly higher in their commitment to their coach.</p><p>Commitment was significantly related to intention to leave for all three foci examined. Of the three, commitment to team explained the most variance (17.5%) in intention to leave. All three foci of commitment were also significantly related to satisfaction, with commitment to coach explaining the most variance (68.6%). Possible explanations for these findings, along with directions for future research on student-athlete commitment will be discussed.</p>