Re: Student perceptions of academic performance

[Robert Herdegen]

>Well, I have no direct resources, but it seems it would be 'fairly'
>easy to get archival data for sports that in particular the in season
>and off season match a semester designation, and for athletes who do
>not overlap sports and semesters--i.e., football more of a fall
>semester sport and baseball a spring semester sport but baseketball
>overlapping. So maybe you can get archival data from yours and other
>nearby institutions as a point of departure?
>
>annette
>

Annette:

You've correctly anticipated one direction in which his work is going. Actually, I did those comparisons a few years ago, in a study which looked at in-season and out-of-season grades of athletes, over 5 years, and based as you suggest on archival records. I found a small difference between in- and out-of-season grades, with slightly poorer performance in-season (and also adjusting for course load). What struck me, however, was that consistently students and coaches reported (anecdotally) the impression that they did better in-season. Factors cited were stricter study schedules forced on them by greater demands on their time, support and encouragement for good academic work by their coaches, carry-over of values of discipline and such from athletics to academics. Objectively, however, their impressions weren't being supported. My student is going to try to look at actual performance of the football players compared to what their impressions are. What we've had a hard time finding is literature on the accuracy of impressions of students in general (not limited to athletes) with respect to their academic performance (though it appears that there are some good recommendations being made by my fellow TIPSters).

Incidentally, it is getting much harder to make these within-subject comparisons anymore, with most sports (even at this little Division III school) going to year-round practices. Football is the only major sport here that doesn't have out-of-season practice. What are the implications for us as teachers, of such changes in athletic policy? We're trying to bring a little bit of scientific evidence to the discussion.

Thanks for your comments!

Bob

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Robert T. Herdegen III
Department of Psychology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943
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