$15,000 Grant Funds UTSA Student-Athlete Wellbeing Study

Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio have received a grant to fund a study on student-athlete wellbeing. 

The American Athletic Conference Academic Consortium is giving the researchers a $15,000 grant for their research proposal, “Student-Athletes’ Road to Success in College Life: Factors Influencing Well-Being, Athletic and Academic Performance.” The university announced the project in a news release Monday.

Researchers and UTSA faculty members Seok Kang (communication) and Adel Alaeddini (mechanical engineering) will collect data over the next year to examine factors affecting student-athletes’ athletic and academic performance. Kang and Alaeddini's goal is to enhance the wellbeing programs in college and university athletics departments around the country.

“The precedent of academic and athletic performance is student well-being,” Kang, a UTSA professor specializing in digital communication, said. “The goal of this project is to find the factors that influence the high academic and athletic performance of student-athletes and the role of well-being in successful performance.”

Student-athletes often face challenges as they juggle their athletic and academic identities, a scenario that leads to decreased wellbeing. The hurdles stem from factors such as:

• prolonged absences from classes
• scarce leisure time
• financial instability
• compromised training due to academic commitments
• a constant sense of being overwhelmed

The UTSA researchers will send questionnaires to 500 student-athletes enrolled at the 15 universities in the American Athletic Conference. The data collected will reveal student athletes’ experiences, motivations, attitudes, wellbeing and evaluations of their academic and athletic performance.

"This research will provide schools in The American with an important guideline for student-athletes and their welfare, their performance and well-being,” Kang said.

The researchers will apply self-determination theory and the theory of planned behavior to examine the factors influencing student-athletes.

Once data is collected by the end of 2023, the researchers will analyze the data through machine learning and text mining. Kang calls this analytical approach “computational communication.”

Alaeddini, an associate professor in mechanical engineering with expertise in machine learning, text mining and data mining, will aid Kang in quantifying the data the researchers collect. They’ll apply the use of natural language processing to classify the data, increasing the accuracy of research results using algorithms.

UTSA officially joined the American Athletic Conference on July 1, 2023, as the league welcomed six institutions to form its new lineup of 15 schools.

As a member of The American, UTSA Athletics will enjoy greater national media exposure, enhanced brand recognition, more Texas team matchups and expanded recruiting opportunities, furthering its ability to compete at the highest level, UTSA said in the news release.