My scholarship presentation is on Amanda Paule and Todd Gilson research, called “Current Collegiate Experiences of Big-Time, Non-Revenue, NCAA Athletes.” The research examines the benefits and challenges of collegiate athletes from non-revenue sports experiences. An issue that other studies have run into is combining the experiences of both revenue and non-revenue athletes, which makes it difficult to identify the specific experience for the current non-revenue athletes. Paule and Gilson call for another entity other than the NCAA to conduct a study on non revenue athletes because they are such a large part of collegiate Division I sports. The study investigates big-time non-revenue athletes from a qualitative perspective, selects participants from a variety of sports-based on a random sampling of the population across different geographic locations and conferences, and broadly examines the benefits and challenges that these collegiate athletes face. Participants for the study are current NCAA collegiate athletes at major Division I universities. Interviews were conducted with 30 collegiate athletes who were chosen at random. Non-revenue athletes were selected from volleyball, track and field, swimming and diving, soccer, golf, and tennis. There were 20 females and 10 males in the sample. The interviews conducted were semi-structured. They consisted of the researcher covering the same set of questions in the same order with the participants, but they were allowed to ask probing questions to get a clarified response. The purpose of the study was to understand the current challenges and benefits non-revenue athletes face during their collegiate careers. While interviews were able to gain insight into collegiate athletes’ lives, a limitation to the study was researchers were unable to explore interesting and unique answers.
Paule, A. L., & Gilson, T. A. (2010). Current collegiate experiences of big-time, non-revenue, NCAA athletes. Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, 3(2), 333-347.