Date of Award

8-2016

Document Type

Thesis

College

Richard W.Riley College of Education

Degree Program

Physical Education, Sport, and Human Performance

Degree Name

Master of Science

Thesis Advisor

Dr. Jinwook Jason Chung

Committee Member

Dr. Kristi Schoepfer

Committee Member

Dr. David Schary

Keywords

Intramural Sports, Club Sports, Participation, Recruitment, Retention.

Abstract

Recruitment and retention is a crucial and central goal for almost all higher education institutions. Therefore, it is important for universities and colleges to provide diverse activities and events to keep the students and prospective students interested and engaged. Previous research suggests that intramural and club sports programs are activities that could help increase recruitment and retention (McElveen & Rossow, 2014; Kampf & Teske, 2013). There is still a need, however, to show the impact of participation in intramural and club sports on a student’s intention to return to campus. This study examined how participation, commitment, and satisfaction levels effect a student’s intention to return to campus the following semester. The sample consisted of 140 students that responded to the questionnaire but only 82 (58.6%) of those were usable (57.3% male and 42.7% female). Results of this study showed that participation levels had no significant effect on retention of the student for both intramural and club sports (.067 and .162 respectively). However, commitment and satisfaction had a significant impact on the student’s intention to return for the intramural and club sports programs (intramural = .035 & .012; club sports = .016 & .017 respectively). These results show that overall experience of intramural and club sports matter much more to the student’s behavior than level of participation. Universities/colleges should be focusing more on the satisfaction of their participants to keep them committed to continue playing and coming back to campus the following year.

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