Athletic identity, institutional support services, and transition factors: An analysis of student-athlete perceptions and implications

Brewer, Van Raalte and Linder (1993) defined the term athletic identity as the degree to which a person identifies with the role of an athlete and seeks outside acknowledgement of that role. Those who have a high athletic identity tend to be those who have achieved elite levels within athletics. These elite athletes tend to base their self-worth and self-esteem on their ability, performance and the appreciation of their athletic talent, while gradually neglecting other aspects of psycho-social development (Cieslak II, 2004). These resulting deficits have been attributed to what is called identity foreclosure in the literature. High-stakes athletes can tend to take a short-term outlook rather than focusing on their post-sport careers. This aversion to long-term and transitional planning can have tremendous behavioral and psycho-social consequences resulting from individuals’ inability to identify as anything other than an athlete. This cross-sectional, exploratory, survey study recorded athletic identity scores, perceived value ratings of support services, and a career situation inventory to ascertain relationships between these factors. One-way ANOVAs and Spearman correlations were utilized to identify differences between traditional interest groups for each component as well as to provide preliminary relationships between the dependent variables. Significant differences were detected between groups and correlations between athletic identity, perception of support services, and transitional career components were identified.