Study takes measure of college athletes.

Study takes measure of college athletes

The first nationwide survey of college athletes, including those in big-time football and basketball programs, provides both encouraging and disturbing news about these young men and women. The $1.75 million study was commissioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Presidents Commission.

"There are no great surprises in the results," Martin A. Massengale, chair of the NCAA group and chancellor of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, told a press conference this week in Washington, D.C. "But this is truly a landmark study for college athletics and provides the first national data on student athletes."

Investigators, directed by psychologist Robert J. Rossi of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in Palo Alto, Calif., administered questionnaires earlier this year to 4,083 students at 42 NCAA Division I colleges and universities, which include the highest-level athletic programs. Students and institutions were chosen randomly.

College athletes included football players, men's and women's basketball players, men and women with athletic grants in other sports, and men and women playing in other sports without athletic grants. The researchers also surveyed students involved in time-consuming extracurricular activities other than intercollegiate athletics, such as band, drama, student newspaper or campus workstudy programs.

Data are not yet available for students uninvolved in demanding extracurricular activities or for a separate sample of black students participating in no such activities.

The study finds some enocuraging similarities between athletes and "other extracurricular" students. Both groups report spending about the same number of hours per week in class, preparing for class and in social activities. The two groups are, in general, equally satisfied with their academic performance.

Football and basketball players, however, spend 30 hours per week in their sports when they are in season and 18 hours per week in their sports during the off-season, more time than they spend preparing for and attending class combined. Athletes in all sports had slightly lower grades than other extracurricular students.

About three-quarters of college athletes, including football and basketball players, do not expect to become professional athletes. The athletes are nearly twice as likely as other extracurricular students to say they intend to get a college degree in business; students with other extracurricular interests are more likely to work toward degrees in engineering, arts and humanities, education and biological sciences.

While more than a third of football and basketball players and nearly half of the other athletes report being an athlete made it easier to avoid drugs, 12 percent of the football and basketball players say being an athlete made it harder to avoid drugs. The survey did not ask about the use of specific drugs, such as cocaine or steroids.

Among football and basketball players, 12 percent reported problems in at least two of five areas: psychological distress, physical distress, difficulty in avoiding drugs or alcohol, mental and physical abuse, and poor academic performance. About 4 percent of college athletes in other sports reported problems in two or more of these areas, as did 7 percent of other extracurricular students.

Students were not asked about sources of abuse or psychological distress.

College athletes with multiple problems are found more often at institutions with successful, highly competitive football and basketball programs. The researchers plan to question these students more closely.

These and other study findings will be considered by the NCAA in upcoming discussions of college athletics policy.