I have asked dozens of college athletics administrators, faculty athletic reps, coaches and student affairs professionals this question: ‘What is the student-athlete experience? ‘ While no two people answered the question the same way, all agreed that the student-athlete experience is the most important element of their athletics program.
The second question I asked the same people was more difficult to answer: ‘How do you know if you are doing a good job with your student-athlete experience?’ The most common response was an uncomfortably long pause. A story about a student-athlete soon followed.
Stories about outcomes are important but usually they are considered just that: stories. These anecdotes help recruit student-athletes, raise money and gain media exposure, but they can’t demonstrate the full impact of your athletics program, and they are not an efficient way to justify resources.
The reason many people, including coaches and athletics administrators, stop and pause is that they have never had to articulate what their student-athlete experience is about or intended to achieve.
Some might argue that an athletics department mission statement speaks to the student-athlete experience, and most do, but indirectly. “Enhancing the overall educational experience” is a great example of a pure and honest statement of purpose for intercollegiate athletics participation. But what does it mean?
Athletics is full of success stories. Young men and women overcoming adversity to achieve great things in life, and attributing their success to lessons learned in sports. Their stores are powerful. Few question the positive impact athletics has made on these student-athletes.
But can we measure this impact? How do you measure leadership? Can one improve his or her response to adversity? What would that look like?
Gathering data directly from student-athletes provides data from the front lines. The data will reveal common challenges and strengths that all of your student-athletes share. More importantly, it can help you make decisions about resource allocation.
Here are three things you can utilize to collect, analyze and report on data from you student-athletes:
- Season-end Survey: administered on paper, online to each team
- Senior Exit Interview/Survey: collecting a broader perspective on the experience
- Individual Interviews: with a sampling of student-athletes to give you more data depth
- Focus Groups: with teams or a mixture of student-athletes, again to provide more detailed feedback and the opportunity to drill down into specific topic
- Lastly, after you’ve gone to all the trouble to collect this data, make sure it doesn’t just sit on your computer, in your desk file or, worse yet, disappear. Invest some time to analyze the data to make sense of what your student-athletes are reporting, saying and feeling. If your time is short or you don’t feel qualified to conduct the analysis, ask for help. Faculty members are good resources, or hire someone with expertise in this area.
Whichever method of collect you choose, your data will be much more valuable once you take time to analyze and understand its meaning.