Erianne Weight, Amy Bonfiglio, J.D. DeFreese, Zachary Kerr, Barbara Osborne

Abstract: The impact of sport on the education and development of athlete participants is an area of inquiry rich in anecdotes and assumptions, but limited in empirical quantification. Addressing these limits, a body of literature is emerging documenting differences in athlete and non-athlete measures, with an underlying assumption that these differences could in part be due to sport participation. Within this study, salary, job satisfaction, and work engagement of former athlete and non-athlete graduates from a large southeastern public university was collected to extend and address holes in the literature related to athlete occupational measures. A sample of n = 472 athletes and random sample of n = 550 non-athletes working full time from cohorts 10, 20, 30, and 40 years post-graduation completed an occupational measures questionnaire including the Spector Job Satisfaction Survey, and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Athletes reported significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, salary, and work engagement, than their non-athlete peers in nearly each demographic category of comparison. This study adds to the literature examining the association between intercollegiate athletics participation and occupational measures.

Citation: Weight, E., Bonfiglio, A., DeFreese, J. D., Kerr, Z., & Osborne, B. (2018). Occupational measures of former NCAA athletes and traditional students. International Journal of Sport Management, 19(2), 137-162.

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