NCAA Athletic Department Employee Perceptions of Workplace Related Burnout, Commitment, and Emotional Intelligence

The objective of this study was to determine employees’ perceptions across National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisions I, II, and III athletic departments of the following general categories and their respective subcategories: (a) emotional intelligence consisting of appraisal of emotions, optimism, utilization of emotions, social skills, and emotional exhaustion; (b) commitment consisting of affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment; and (c) burnout outcomes consisting of exhaustion, and cynicism. The literature offers broad perspectives related to burnout, commitment, and emotional intelligence along with the respective subcategories (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne 2003; Grichnik, Smeja, & Welpe 2010; Opengart 2005; Patzelt, & Shepherd 2011; Youssef, & Luthans 2007). An intercollegiate sport centered questionnaire was developed by the researchers, the content of which was grounded in seminal research studies related to emotional intelligence, commitment, and burnout outcomes. Feedback from five experts who held no less than 15 years of working experience in an NCAA athletic department helped support content validity. The questionnaire consisted of a demographic section followed by a 7 point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, that included 49 total statements. Electronic mail was used to send the questionnaire to a random sample of 333 athletic department employees whose e-mail addresses were obtained from the publicly accessible National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics’ (NACDA) National Directory of College Athletics. Of the 333 surveys mailed, 82 were returned for a 24.6% response rate. Descriptive statistics was applied to the data to arrive at findings related to athletic department employees’ responses to the subcategories of the general categories related to burnout, commitment, and emotional intelligence. Athletic department employees were found to generally agree. Overall, responses by the athletic department employees indicated perceptions related to each of three categories of emotional exhaustion, commitment and burnout outcomes that are favorable to the well-being of the athletic department.