HIGH-SCHOOL ATHLETES’ IMPLICIT THEORIES OF ABILITY GENERALIZE ACROSS SPORTS AND ACADEMIC DOMAINS

According to global comparisons, the American education system is struggling with nearly 7,000 students dropping out of secondary schools each day. Of particular interest to this study is that coaches of extracurricular high school sports could play a key role in resolving this crisis. The purpose of the proposed study was to examine the extent to which implicit theories of ability may generalize across the domains of sports and academics. Participants were adolescents (N=395; ages 14-19 years old) who attend a high school in western Texas. Drawing on similar academic research, SEM was used to identify any relations between the two domains. The developed model showed to be a very good fit for the data, χ2 = 473.183 (321), p < .001, CFI = .958, TLI = .950, and RMSEA = .035 with a 90% confidence interval of .028 - .041. All items had adequate factor loadings as well (.485- .817).
The results showed that there does exist a statistically and practically significant relation between implicit theories of ability in the sports domain and implicit theories of intelligence in the academic domain in high school student-athletes. This connection could lead to more economical and practical approaches of using coaches to help ameliorate America’s struggles with dropout and low achievement. Implications for future research include using experimental studies to determine which coaching methods in athletics most positively influence academic achievement, investigate causal relations between coaching and academics, and longitudinal studies to investigate the long-term effects of fostering an incremental theory in high school student-athletes.