First Annotation

Apaak, Daniel, and Emmanuel Sarpong. Internal Challenges Affecting Academic Performance of Student-Athletes in Ghanaian Public Universities. , 2015, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1080130.pdf.

Apaak & Sarpong is empirical research that investigates the internal challenges that affect the student-athletes performance. The study was done in Ghanaian public varsities and was intentioned to illustrate why a typical student’s athlete might face challenges in his or her academic course. Notably, the research cohort employed the descriptive survey research approach and chose 1158 student-athletes from seven public universities in the country as named above. However, the criteria used in selecting the universities are that they must have participated in the 2014 university sports at Cape Coast. Further, by using simple random sampling, 332 respondents were chosen from the seven universities, and a questionnaire was the instrument that the researchers used to gather data for analysis. Mainly, the questionnaire was purposed to obtain information regarding the internal challenges that affect the student’s athletes. 

The research findings established that the student’s athletes face a unique set of challenges than other students who do not get engrossed in sporting activities. Accordingly, they spend significant time training on the sports which may detrimentally affect their studies. Further, it was noted that much time is also spent on traveling, and since some of the athletes have poor time management skills, they miss a lot in their lectures and assignments. Furthermore, some students spent a lot of time thinking about improving their sporting activities. 

These findings will be significantly helpful in preparing my research paper. It will help in debunking how university sports permeates society politically, educationally, psychologically, and more so, financially. Accordingly, it will help showcase how the student-athletes are an image to the universities, although this comes at a high cost since most of them compromise their study time. This study will be a good basis to argue that the student’s athlete compromises their academic performance as they are likely to suffer pregnancy, learning disabilities, substance abuse, identity foreclosure, and mental health disorders. 

Indeed, the research by Apaak & Sarpong is an exposition of the challenges that university student-athletes face while attempting to balance academics and sporting activities. This research will form the basis of my recommendations as it showcases stakeholders’ role in addressing the situation. For instance, it showcases the need for the stakeholders to collaborate in creating a sports schedule that will not disrupt a student’s academic year and offer them sufficient time for study and attain commendable grades.