A qualitative analysis of university athlete’s perceptions and negotiations of health and athletic participation

Adams, Nichole (2014) A qualitative analysis of university athlete’s perceptions and negotiations of health and athletic participation. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This qualitative study explores student-athletes’ relationships with food and exercise, often referred to as eating and training thus unpacking how student-athletes come to understand health within the context of university sport. The unique nature of the study, with its focus on intercollegiate sport in Canada, contributes to the lack of knowledge about Canadian sport athletes’ experiences of sport, and it provides a qualitative lens to consider how student-athletes construct notions about the body, health and performance. Seventeen (eight female and nine male) student-athletes, from Memorial University 2010-2011 varsity roster participated in this study. Participants were representative of varsity sports offered at the university, including individual sports: cross-country running, swimming and wrestling; and team sports: basketball, soccer and volleyball. Data collection involved four focus group discussions and follow-up semi-structured interviews with four individual student-athletes. Using discourse analysis, informed by Foucault’s concepts of the panopticon and technologies of the self, data analysis exposed how cultures of sport not only shape student-athletes understandings of eating and training but also how sport normalizes and regulates specific (un)healthy ideas and practices.

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