Athletic Identity, Identity Foreclosure, and Career Maturity Among College Athletes

Background/Purpose: This investigation examined the strength of the relationships between level of athletic identity, identity foreclosure, and career maturity among NCAA Division III student-athletes.

Method: Data were collected from 367 male and female Division III student-athletes participating in basketball, cross country, track and filed, and soccer at four Midwest nationally competitive institutions. Ninety-one per cent of the participants self-identified as Caucasian and 55% were male. The Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS; Brewer, Van Raalte & Linder, 1993) and the Public-Private Athletic Identity Scale (PPAIS; Nasco & Webb, 2006) were two scales utilized to measure athletic identity. The level of identity foreclosure was measured by using the foreclosure subcale of the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (OM-EIS; Adams, Shea, & Fitch, 1979) and level of career maturity was measured utilizing the Attitude Scale of the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI; Crites, 1978). Cronbach alpha coefficients were AIMS (.79), PPAIS total (.67; public subscale = .65 private subscale = .70) and OM-EIS (.74).

Analysis/Results: A MANOVA found no significant main effect for gender but did show a significant main effect for sport (Wilks Lambda = .88, F(10,706)=4.59, p<.01). The interaction effect between gender and sport was not significant. Pearson product moment correlations showed that AIMS scores (r=-.15, p<.01), PPAIS total scores (r=-.33, p<.01) public athletic identity scores (r=-.34, p<.01), private athletic identity scores (r=-.16, p<.01), and identity foreclosure scores (r=-13, p<.05) were all inversely related to career maturity scores. However, a stepwise regression analysis with career maturity as the dependent variable showed that public athletic identity entered first and explained 11% of the variance in career maturity. Private athletic identity was the only other significant predictor and it added 1% more variance explained.

Conclusions: Although the relationships in the present study are in the same direction as shown in much of the previous research among NCAA Division I student-athletes, the relationships among this sample of Division III student-athletes were much weaker. These data suggest that NCAA Division III student-athletes may negotiate their identity hierarchies differently than student-athletes in Division I. In addition, results suggest that public and private identity scores may be more effective in predicting level of career maturity than the more general athletic identity score (AIMS).