Master of Science / Department of Counseling and Student Development / Christy Moran Craft / Graduate assistants in residence life face many different challenges that are unique to their positions, and their wellness is critical to ensuring their place as competent professionals ready to serve students on university campuses. For the continued success and relevance of graduate assistantship positions in housing departments, it is critical that an effort be made to understand these student employees’ experiences as they complete graduate study and are employed under various expectations that may be directly impactful to the manner in which they work with students. This report serves to understand the experiences of residence life graduate assistants to better prepare full-time professionals in supervising and supporting these individuals.

The sport industry is a popular and competitive career field with employees drawn to work in a dynamic, yet often untraditional work environment. The challenge of achieving work-life balance has received considerable study in sport, as employees often find a conflict in balancing their job and other life responsibilities, such as family (work-family conflict) and outside activities. This study introduces a new area of potential conflict (work-extracurricular conflict), the outside activities that may be neglected due to a job, which may impact employees. This area may be especially pertinent to a younger segment of the industry which has not been studied, graduate assistants who work in athletic departments while continuing their education. The purpose of this exploratory study was to assess work-life balance in graduate assistants (GAs) and their supervisors by comparing their levels of work-family conflict, work-extracurricular conflict, job satisfaction, and life satisfaction. Secondly, the study introduced the work-extracurricular conflict construct. Data were collected from GAs and supervisors (N = 47) working in five Division I university athletic departments. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA revealed significant differences between GAs’ and supervisors’ job satisfaction, while determining they did not differ on work-family conflict, work-extracurricular conflict and life satisfaction levels. They reported moderate levels of family and extracurricular conflict. Sport managers can utilize this information to better understand the work-life balance of GAs and establish dialogue on ways to improve GAs experience in hopes of keeping these sport professionals in the industry long-term.

Context: Scapular motion evaluation is a necessary component of the upper extremity exam. Several methods exist, but most lack good reliability or diagnostic accuracy. The yes/no scapular dyskinesis test has the best of both measures but is untested on inexperienced clinicians. Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and diagnostic accuracy of the yes/no scapular dyskinesis test when used by graduate assistant athletic trainers. Participants: The participants were college-aged students with no prior history of upper extremity fracture or nerve injury. Data Collection and Results: Participants were evaluated for scapular dyskinesis by a physician and 10 graduate assistant athletic trainers. Ratings were for normal or dyskinetic and then determination of side. Reliability was calculated using Gwet’s AC1 statistic and diagnostic accuracy from standard 2x2 contingency tables. Results: Reliability was moderate (AC1 = 0.48, p < 0.0025, 95% CI [0.147, 0.812]) when side was not accounted for and moderate (AC1 = 0.43, p < 0.0001, 95% CI [0.242, 0.632]) when side-per-side decisions were made. Sensitivity and negative predictive values were low to moderate (34.4%-66.2%, 8.9%-74.1% ). Specificity and positive predictive values were moderate to high (50%-85.2%, 51.5%-95.2%). Accuracy was moderate (65.2%-69.4%) and positive and negative likelihood ratios were low (1.325-2.333, 0.675-0.769). Conclusions: The reliability in this study was on par with previously published studies. Measures of diagnostic accuracy met or exceeded previous results. Clinically, to avoid false negative results and enhance the use of positive results, it appears necessary to combine methods and begin the evaluation with a gross assessment of whether or not dyskinesis is present and if it is to then evaluate which side is dyskinetic.