Positive Youth Development's 6th C: The Nature of Contribution in University Athletes

Abstract

The overall purpose of this Master’s thesis was to gain an in-depth understanding of university student-athletes’ contributions. The first manuscript included in this thesis assesses the suitability of the Positive Youth Development Very Short Form (PYD-VSF) for use with an emerging adult athlete population, using data from 74 university student-athletes who completed an online questionnaire. The findings suggest that the PYD-VSF is not an appropriate measure for this population. The second and third manuscript used data from 10 interviews. The second manuscript examined university student-athletes’ motivations to contribute and found participants reported that contributing served as a way to satisfy the basic psychological needs and possessed multiple motives simultaneously. The third manuscript explored the facilitators and barriers relating to university student-athletes’ contributions and found that academic and athletic time constraints were significant barriers to contribution and teammates, coaches, and staff members of the athletics department facilitated contributions.