The burden of the balance: Action-research examining the stress experienced by student-athletes at acadia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reports indicate that university student-athletes are experiencing increased rates of stress. As a consequence, athletics departments have begun to consider and implement programs and services to help student-athletes cope with the demands placed on them. PURPOSE : The objective of this collaborative action-research was to examine factors contributing to student-athletes' stress and burnout in order to inform efforts to improve the student-athlete experience at Acadia University. METHODS: Using a cross-sectional design, student-athletes (N=81, Mage=20yrs) across six varsity teams completed measures assessing perceived stress, mental health, burnout, confidence, coping style, perceived pressure, and support, as well as measures examining the primary contributors to student-athletes' stress. RESULTS: Student-athletes identified coaches as the highest source of pressure, and parents as the strongest source of support. The three most frequently identified factors contributing to student-athletes' stress were schooling (95%), time pressures/not enough time (91%), and personal relationships (61%). Bivariate correlations revealed that higher perceived stress was related to worse mental health (r= -.70), higher burnout (r = .55), and lower confidence (r = -.53). A MANOVA revealed sex differences in that female student-athletes reported significantly higher levels of stress, pressure, and burnout, as well as lower team inclusion, and slightly poorer mental health compared to male student-athletes (all ps<.005). CONCLUSION: These preliminary findings highlight the impact balancing both academics and athletics has on student-athletes. Further they suggest that future initiatives aimed to improve the student-athlete experience should work to prepare student-athletes for their demanding schedules, focusing in particular on the concerns of female student-athletes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".