Student-Athlete wellness: Questions, frequency and insights

Mental health and wellbeing is not an easy topic for anybody to open up and speak freely about, let alone student-athletes undergoing a myriad of ever-changing challenges. Sports performance/healthy lifestyle, academic expectations, social media pressures, difficulties with maintaining meaningful relationships with their peers are all contributing to the pressures that student-athletes today are facing.

Due to its subjective nature, along with the numerous factors that can trigger change throughout the year, understanding students wellbeing at a school-wide level is no easy task even for the most experienced teacher/coaches.

Research shows that regular "check-ins" via surveys provide a comfortable environment for students to open up about their concerns and voice their needs.

Surveying students is key to finding out if anything is troubling them - from academic pressure to sleep issues, bullying, social relationships, connectedness to the community and other factors. Research shows us that for adolescents, data collected via self-reports is the most accurate and representative of their internal world and lived experience.

Above: One of the many reporting dashboards available on the MVP Analytics platform for coaches to view and take action on any trends individually or as a whole team/school

Information is powerful and self-reported information gives staff an accurate insight into wellness and the difficulties students face which provides an opportunity for prevention and early intervention. Knowing what to ask and how often to ask for feedback is important to collecting the right information to gauge their level of happiness and wellbeing. MVP has created an easy to use library of questions that can be chosen from and re-ordered to provide a bespoke survey template that can be used again and again.

Check out this step by step guide of how to set up a wellness system in this article.

MVP uses standard deviations (how far away the answer is from their normal answers) to pick out any issues that need to be flagged and action taken by the teacher/coach. This is readily available on the coach homepage along with any question answers that require action too. Open comments at the end of each survey provide the opportunity for students to open up about a matter that may not be directly surveyed but is personally troubling them. This communication is able to occur in a medium that is familiar to students and removes the barriers that can come with having to directly approach staff members. It is a simple yet powerful tool to voice any concerns in an environment that feels safe and free from judgement.

How often should you survey?

There is no right answer. How frequently surveys should be sent out really depends on your school. However, there is a spectrum to explore and different frequencies bring both positives and potential downsides.

To survey more frequently, say once a day, brings with it more data and insight (in theory) which enables you to capture more acute changes in student wellness. It goes without saying that the more you survey, the more opportunities you’re providing to students to give their feedback. The downside of a daily survey is that at some point or another, students will become “survey fatigued”, and what was once a great way for them to provide feedback and reflect on their wellbeing becomes just another chore.

On the other hand, sending surveys out too seldom like twice a year isn’t enough to enable regular, accurate visibility of students’ wellbeing. Staff won’t be able to detect potential issues before they turn into actual problems, and, therefore, solve those problems. In addition, students won’t have a regular opportunity to express their concerns or reflect on their wellness.

We typically see that most of our customers survey somewhere between weekly and fortnightly. For those just beginning to utilise regular wellbeing surveys, a monthly cadence is also a good frequency.

To speak to us about wellness surveys and the rest of the tools available in MVP Analytics please contact us here or book an appointment here.