Award Date
5-15-2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
First Committee Member
Bradley Donohue
Second Committee Member
Paul Nelson
Third Committee Member
Gloria Wong-Padoongpatt
Fourth Committee Member
John Mercer
Number of Pages
100
Abstract
Traditional approaches to assessing mental health typically emphasize problems, impairment, or dysfunction. In doing so, the positive end of the mental health spectrum is overlooked. Moreover, collegiate students have reported discomfort in reporting mental health symptom severity, a concern that may be particularly pronounced in collegiate student athletes. Along this vein, extant information exists in regards to consumer perceived quality and satisfaction of pathology-focused measures, and some evidence suggests assessment of the full continuum of functioning, from non-optimal to optimal, may yield more useful information than assessment of mental health problems in collegiate students, particularly collegiate student athletes. In the current study, 779 collegiate students (which includes a subsample of 87 collegiate student athletes), completed a well-established measure of mental health symptom severity (Symptom Checklist-90 questions- Revised, SCL-90-R; Derogatis & Savitz, 1999) and a measure of the full continuum of performance in various domains of life (Optimal Life Performance Scale; OLPS; unpublished manuscript). Immediately after each scale was completed the participants were queried to rate how their responses to these scales would be useful (i.e., quality) to a professional in understanding their mental health performance, sport performance, life performance and the extent to which these scales were perceived to be stigmatizing and comfortable (i.e., satisfaction) to complete. It was hypothesized that collegiate student athletes would perceive the OLPS, a measure reflecting performance across multiple life domains, as more useful than non-athletes, and that there would be no differences between collegiate athletes and collegiate student non-athletes in the extent to which they perceived stigma or comfort in the completion of the scales. Separately, it was hypothesized that athletes would perceive the SCL-90-R, a measure of psychiatric symptom severity, as less useful than collegiate student non-athletes, and rate this scale as more stigmatizing and less comfortable. These comparisons were considered independently, as the two scales assess fundamentally different constructs; psychiatric symptoms versus performance-based functioning. For the OLPS, collegiate athletes reported higher perceived usefulness in sport and mental health domains, but not in life functioning, when compared with collegiate student non-athletes; suggesting greater perceived quality of the OLPS among athletes. For the SCL-90-R, collegiate student athletes reported higher perceived usefulness in sport and mental health domains, with only marginal effects for life functioning, as compared with collegiate student non-athletes. On both the OLPS and SCL-90-R, collegiate student athletes perceived similar levels of comfort and stigma. Clinical implications of the study findings are discussed.
Keywords
athlete mental health; performance optimization; positive spectrum
Disciplines
Clinical Psychology | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
File Format
File Size
726 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Wossen, Lidia, "Collegiate Athletes’ Perceived Quality and Satisfaction with Psychiatric and Performance-Based Assessments" (2026). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 5655.
https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/5655
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/