kfijan / athletementalhealth

EDAV final project bookdown source files (Fall 2021)

Investigating Mental Health Among College Athletes

Katharina Fijan & Erin "Josie" Donnelly -- December 2021

For our final project in Exporatory Data Analysis and Visualizations, we were interested in how different segments of sport types (performative, competitive; team, individual; elite, amateur, etc.) correlated with mental health outcomes. In searching for datasets that had relevant information and data points, we found a survey data of Northeastern University students targeting athletes and non-athletes from 2006. The data includes survey results from 795 students on “how or if participation in sports affects their health-risk behavior”. Based on the data collected, we ask the following questions:

1. How are identification with sports and mental health correlated?

• How does this change with different standards of measuring identity as an athlete?
  • Ex. identifying as jock vs. athlete, or by response to SSQ03: “Sports are an important part of my life”
• How are perceived performance and mental health correlated?
  • Ex. responses to survey questions like “I am the best”
• How are perceived ambition and mental health correlated?
  • Ex. responses to survey questions like “I do my very best”
• How do certain sports appear to be correlated with self-destructive/dangerous behaviors?
  • Ex. driving while drunk/high, engaging in physical fights

2. How are individual/community connection to sports and mental health correlated?

• How does the correlation differ between sports that are typically performed individually (ex. golf, skiing), in small groups (ex. tennis), or in larger teams (ex. soccer)?
• How are responses to survey questions like “Friends are involved in sports” and “Depressed if I couldn’t compete in sports” correlated?

3. How are demographic information and mental health correlated for the student athletes?

• How does the correlation change in high school vs. college athletes? What about community athletes?
• How do mental health responses differ between male and female athletes? Between sports that are traditionally male- or female-dominated?

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Data and supplemental information about the study comes from:

Miller, Kathleen. Athletic Involvement Study (of Students in a Northeastern University in the United States), 2006. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-04-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR33661.v1

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This repo was initially generated from a bookdown template available here: https://github.com/jtr13/EDAVtemplate.