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Category: Project

Description: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted daily life across the world and forced society to reinvent how we live and function. Colleges had to close their campuses and substantially change curricula to keep students safe. Unfortunately, research indicates that these large-scale disruptions led to increased mental distress for many students. Student-athletes, however, may have been relatively protected from these disruptions and resulting distress. Many athletic departments developed policies to return student-athletes to their sports safely, and this relative stability (e.g., consistent social support) throughout the pandemic may have buffered them against disruptions and increased mental distress. We investigated this idea by testing whether National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division-1 and 3 student-athletes (N=38) reported fewer COVID-19-related disturbances (CRD) than their non-student-athlete counterparts (N=55) and assessed the association between self-reported CRD and perceived stress (Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale; PSS). We found that student-athletes reported fewer CRD than non-athletes (p=0.006; 𝜷= -9.74) and that increased CRD predicted higher PSS scores (p=0.000; 𝜷=0.189). Notably, student-athletes reported lower PSS scores (p=0.003; 𝜷=-4.47) but adjusting for CRD attenuated this effect (p=0.05; 𝜷=-2.80). Together, our results support the hypothesis that student-athletes experienced fewer CRD than non-athletes and that this may have lessened their mental distress during the pandemic. In our presentation, we discuss plausible reasons for these results (including sex differences in behavior) and the implications for college students’ mental and physical well-being. We publicly preregistered our analyses to Open Science Frameworks before conducting any tests (https://osf.io/25f4h/).