Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Oklahoma.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-83). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-83).

Thesis (M.S.)--Springfield College, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-165). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-188). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-165).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-188).

In NCAA Division I, academic eligibility standards are national in scope and are the same for all institutions. In NCAA Division III, there are no national standards; rather each member institution establishes its own academic eligibility standards. However, information on these standards has never been collected and published, leaving a significant hole in the research in this area. The problem addressed by this study was to collect this academic eligibility information on the members of one Division III conference. A number of questions were addressed in the study. One was, how do Division III eligibility standards compare to Division I standards? Another was, how do eligibility standards in the Division III institutions studied compare to each other? Since differences were found, a final question addressed was, do the differences in academic eligibility standards between the Division III institutions lead to competitive equity issues. Data on academic eligibility standards from 15 members of one Division III conference were collected through interviews of Compliance Officers at each institution. The data were compared to the NCAA national standards for Division I. The data were also analyzed for differences among the Division III institutions studied. A correlation analysis was used to determine if a relationship existed between academic eligibility standards and competitive equity. The findings of the study were that on most of the academic eligibility variables, the Division III institutions studied had lower standards than the national standards for Division I. In the comparison of Division III institutions to each other, differences were found for high school core course requirements, transfer and continuing student credit hour requirements, and exceptions to the rules. While the study found pronounced differences in competitive equity among the Division III institutions studied, there was no clear indication of any relationship between eligibility requirements and competitive equity. This study provided some interesting information about the institutions in one Division III conference. However, the study raised as many questions as it answered. More work needs to be done to determine whether the policies followed by NCAA Division III institutions are truly different from those followed by Division I institutions. / text

The purpose of this investigation was to determine what factors contribute to student-athlete retention, specifically looking at scholarship support, gender, and sport type (individual or team sport). Eight Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) schools provided data on all student-athletes participating from the 200 1-02 through the 2004-05 academic years. The investigator collected data on site at each institution (University of Delaware, Drexel University, Georgia State University, James Madison University, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the College of William and Mary) and obtained on each student-athlete including year, sport, gender, amount of scholarship support (both athletic and other), total cost of tuition, and retention status.Using analysis of variance (ANOVA), discriminant function analysis, and binary logistic regression, the data were analyzed in regard what type of relationship the independent variables (scholarship support as a percentage of tuition, gender and sport type) have with the dependent variable, retention. Of the nearly 13,000 observations, 12,027 were retained (92.7%) and 953 were not retained (7.3%). Analyses revealed that scholarship support alone was not significantly related to retention, but that gender and sport type were both significant predictors of retention, with women and individual sport athletes being retained at a higher rate than their male and team sport counterparts. Additionally, the combination of scholarship support, gender and sport type resulted in a predictive model of student-athlete retention.Of the 953 non-retained observations, 609 were male and 344 were female, and 338 competed in an individual sport while 61 5 were team sport athletes. Chi-Square Goodness of Fit tests revealed that there were more males and fewer females who were not retained than would be expected, and that there were more team sport athletes and fewer individual sport athletes not retained than would be expected (Chi-square = 5 1.058, df = 1). The findings suggest that further research be conducted on student-athletes as an individual population in regard to retention.