Psychosocial Identity and Career Control in College Student-Athletes

doi:10.1006/jvbe.1999.1691

Journal of Vocational Behavior

Volume 56, Issue 1, February 2000, Pages 53-62

https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1999.1691 Get rights and content

Abstract

This study explored relations between career decision-making self-efficacy, career locus of control, identity foreclosure, and athletic identity among 189 collegiate student-athletes. Student-athletes were also surveyed regarding the amount of time spent weekly participating in their sport and their expectations for professional sport careers. Results indicated that hours of sport participation, identity foreclosure, and career locus of control inversely related to career decision-making self-efficacy. These findings suggest that extensive hours in sport participation, failure to explore alternative roles, and the belief that one's career outcomes are unaffected by one's actions are associated with lower self-efficacy for career decision-making tasks. In addition, student-athletes reported spending anywhere from 20 to 30 or more hours per week participating in their sport, yet few expressed an expectation to advance to the professional rank.

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A total of 391 Finnish-speaking student-athletes completed the questionnaire on career adaptability (Career Adapt-Abilities Scale – Dual Career Form; Ryba & Aunola, 2015; Ryba et al., 2017) at the beginning and end of upper secondary school. The participants’ background information about their sport participation and grade point average were collected upon completion of each grade of upper secondary school. The data were analysed using cluster analysis, cross-tabulation, and one-way analysis of variance.
Four distinct adaptability profiles were identified: higher adaptability, lower adaptability, increasing adaptability, and decreasing adaptability. Higher and lower adaptability profiles showed stable levels of adaptability across time, whereas the adaptability level either increased or decreased in the other two profiles. Student-athletes with a lower career adaptability profile were overrepresented among those who withdrew from competitive sports, and they reported lower grade point averages than those with higher scores of career adaptability.
High scores of career adaptability were associated with high grades, whereas low scores of career adaptability were associated with low grades and a probability to withdraw from competitive sport. Therefore, it is recommended that career adaptability be considered as important self-regulation resources for sustaining dual career pathways over time.
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There is already resonance between the three narrative forms and the two processes, with the Striving narrative involving less exploration and greater levels of commitment, the Seeking narrative involving more exploration with lower immediate levels of commitment, and the Settling narrative involving a moderate degree of exploration and greater commitment. Integrating these processes explicitly into research on the three narrative forms may both add further richness to our understanding of those forms, and, drawing on the identity status and career literature (e.g., Brown et al., 2000; Nauta & Kahn, 2007; Vondracek et al., 1995), help identify other factors related to such narratives. At the same time, the three forms of working life narrative that I have identified may provide a useful extension to the literature on identity status progression, which to date has focused primarily on career transitions in early life (Kelly et al., 2020; Kroger et al., 2010).
Narrative approaches to the self suggest that forced career transitions disrupt individuals’ self-narratives and motivate their efforts to re-establish narrative coherence. To craft and rework their self-narratives, people draw on a range of relational resources, including relationships with family, friends, and other important people in their lives. In this paper, I explore the link, within individuals’ self-narratives, between people’s working lives following a forced career transition and their early parental relationships. I investigate this through a longitudinal narrative study of 21 professional dancers forced to change career after an injury, drawing on three waves of interviews over an eight-year period. I identify three types of self-narrative – Immersed-Striving, Oppositional-Seeking, and Supportive-Settling – that link a kind of early parental relationship to a kind of post-injury relationship to work. In each of these narratives, dance acts as a transitional object with a specific relational meaning – connection, agency, or direction – that was enacted in participants’ early relationships, and that they sought to re-establish through their post-injury working lives.
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But it got to a point where I couldn't do it, I couldn't keep it up anymore. Similar feelings have been expressed by student-athletes as well, substantiating the demanding nature of the industry (Brown, Glastetter-Fender, & Shelton, 2000). The burnout experienced by a few of the participants resulted in physical ailments that would occur once the season ended.
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Athletic identity foreclosure refers to commitment to the athlete role in the absence of exploration of occupational or ideological alternatives. This article traces the theoretical underpinnings of the construct, examines the role of sport participation in identity development, and provides an overview of the course, correlates, and consequences of athletic identity foreclosure. Implications for future research are discussed.
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^☆: Address correspondence and reprint requests to Chris Brown, Division of Counseling Psychology and Counselor Education, University of Missouri—Kansas City, 5100 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110.

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Regular ArticlePsychosocial Identity and Career Control in College Student-Athletes☆

Abstract

Journal of Vtional Behavior

Journal of Vocational Behavior

Journal of Vocational Behavior

Toward the development of an objective assessment of ego identity status

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Understanding the career transition of athletes

The Sport Psychologist

Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavior change

Psychological Review

Evaluation of a short form of the career decision-making self-efficacy scale

Journal of Career Assessment

Intercollegiate athletic competition and students' educational and career plans

Journal of College Student Personnel

Athletic Identity: Hercules' muscles or achilles heel

International Journal of Sport Psychology

Beyond athletic participation: Career development interventions with student-athletes

Journal of College Student Development

Athletic identity and career maturity of male college student athletes

International Journal of Sport Psychology

Sports counseling: Enhancing the development of the student-athlete

Journal of Counseling and Development

Childhood and society

Counseling college student-athletes: The problem, the need

Physical fitness training and mental health

American Psychologist

Identity foreclosure, athletic identity, and college sport participation

The Academic Athletic Journal, Spring

Student services for athletes: A model for enhancing the student-athlete experience

Journal of Counseling and Development

Regular Article
Psychosocial Identity and Career Control in College Student-Athletes☆