COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SPORTS PARTICIPATION ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF STUDENT-ATHLETES AND NON STUDENT-ATHLETES IN OFFINSO COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study was to compare and ascertain whether participation or nonparticipation in sports has any influence on the academic performance of OFCE students. The study was intended also to find out whether there would be any difference between the academic performance of female student- athletes compared to non female studentathletes and lastly to study whether there would be differences between male studentathletes compared to malenon student- athletes. Forty student- athletes were purposively selected from among the college’s student- athlete population of 124 from the Ashanti/ Brong-Ahafo (ASHBA) team and stratified random sampling was used to select a sample of160 from a population of975 non students- athletes in the college. The non studentathletes were divided into Diploma in Basic Education A- Diploma in Basic Education H separately and then, by random number method of the simple random sampling each student was given the chance to be chosen. The study adopted causal comparative research design with independent t- test as the statistical technique at a significant level of 0.05 of two tailed to answer four research questions and one hypothesis. Students mean cumulative GPA score was used to answer three questions and a sixteen item questionnaire with reliability co-efficient of 0.79 was used to answer one research question. The findings revealed that students have good reasons for playing sports and do not see playing sports to be affecting their academic performance. However, students who play sports for the college were sometimes disadvantaged because they at times get too tired or miss lectures playing sports for the college. There was slight difference in the mean cumulative GPA scores of student athletes as compared to non student-athletes. It is recommended that college authorities and parents should encourage students to actively take part in sporting activities and also train students to plan and manage their time for sports and academic activities.