Investigation of Academic and Athletic Motivation on Academic Performance Among University Students

Abstract

Abstract-The purpose of this paper is to examine the academic and athletic motivation and identify the factors that determine the academic performance among university students in the Emirates of Dubai. The study examined motivation based on nontraditional measure adopting a scale to measure both academic as well as athletic motivation. This study involving 217 athlete and non-athlete students reveals that academic motivation, career athletic motivation and student athletic motivation are motivational factors in improving students' academic performance. Further, it showed there is a significant trend in student athletic motivation as a function of both father educational qualification and mother educational qualification. Findings also suggests a significant trend in career athletic motivation as a function of nationality, however, there is no significant pattern observed from all the three factors as a function of gender and GPA.

Motivation toward dual career of Italian student-athletes enrolled in different university paths

“…Although in the previous studies on SAMSAQ [10,11,22,23,25,26], no difference emerged in relation to gender for any factors, the findings of this study seem to confirm the above-mentioned expectations. In fact, female Italian student-athletes reported higher AM scores with respect to their males' counterparts, suggesting that the general Italian development of women's sport is not able to minimize the gender effect in sports.…”

“…However, confirming the previous literature [10,20,22,23,25,26], social-cultural systems are crucial in influencing the factor structure of the instrument, determining different models suitable for different studentathletes populations. Independently of the national social and policy supports for dual career, Italian student-athletes' sport, academic, and career motivational scores resulted quite similar to those of American [11], United Arab Emirates [10], and other European [25] student-athletes. In particular, similarities emerged with the latter study, where higher, intermediate, and lower values were reported for CM, SM, and AM scores, respectively.…”

“…In particular, SM and AM are maintained in both models, also in accordance with the factor structure emerged in the previous studies [10,11,22,23,25]. Conversely, in the study of Guidotti and Capranica [23], which adopted for the first time a harmonized version of the SAMSAQ for Italian student-athletes (SAMSAQ-IT/ A), the career motivation consisted of two subscales, differentiating the motivation toward a sport career as an athlete (CMA) and the one as a sport operator (CMSO).…”

“…Although Northern American and United Arab Emirates student-athletes sport and educational systems are effectively organized to support student-athletes in achieving their academic and sport goals, they frequently struggle to meet the requirements for the academic eligibility due to of a higher motivation toward the athletic success with respect to the academic one [10][11][12]. On the contrary, in Europe, the relationships between sport and educational systems are not still well established [3], favouring talented athletes' sport dropout to prioritize education to prepare for future job opportunities [13,14] or to postpone (i.e., [24 years of age) the achievement of a degree.…”

“…Findings highlighted that SAMSAQ is a valuable psychometric tool to monitor American studentathletes' motivations [11,18,19], also highlighting that the two ''athletic'' motivational factors (i.e., SAM and CAM) were mainly considered by male student-athletes with respect to female, whereas the opposite picture emerged in considering the ''academic'' factor (i.e., AM). However, it has been applied [10,20] or recommended [21] in other national contexts. In Europe, student-athletes' motivations were investigated in different socio-cultural contexts [22][23][24][25][26].…”