Intercollegiate athletes are an important and viable group of students for many colleges, including community colleges. These students can add to the student life experience, increase exposure of institution to the community, and enhance enrollment. Despite the large number of community college athletes, there is little literature on the experiences, recruitment, and college choice patterns of community college athletes. Currently, there are a few studies on college choice of college athletes; however, most of this literature focuses on athletes in powerhouse programs. There are also studies on college choice of community college students; however, this literature generally does not focus on particular segments of traditional aged students. Thus, there is a paucity of literature on the college choice patterns of community college athletes. Given the trend for smaller four-year colleges to use athletics for enrollment management and the declining population in some areas where community colleges are struggling to diversify enrollment, it seems prudent to understand the factors influencing community college athletes' college choice. This study developed a survey and identified factors that influenced college choice of community college athletes. It also examined the relationship between college choice factors and affirmation of choice of college. The study was conducted at eight community colleges and descriptive statistics were used to determine the background of participants. Factor analysis was conducted to reduce the 47 items into fewer, related variables and logistic regression was used to examine the relationship of college choice factors to affirmation of choice. viii Results of the study identified the background and characteristics of the athletes, the factors influencing college choice, differences in the factors with various populations, and then the relationship of the factors to affirmation of choice. Results indicated that various attributes associated with the opportunity to engage in intercollegiate athletics were critical to college choice. Chapter describes the epistemology and theoretical perspective used in this study as well as the methodology, variables, survey construction, sampling techniques, data analysis procedures, delimitations, limitations, and ethical issues. Chapter 4 gives the survey administration process, data analysis and results. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the data analysis and results, implications for practitioners as well as researchers, and then potential directions for future research. Chapter 4 presents the results of an analysis of the quantitative data. Finally, Chapter
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.