Award Date

May 2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences

First Committee Member

Richard Tandy

Second Committee Member

Nancy Lough

Third Committee Member

John Mercer

Fourth Committee Member

Kara Radzak

Number of Pages

78

Abstract

Context: Institutional funding and strained school budgets are a barrier to placing certified athletic trainers (ATCs) in secondary schools. The size and location of a school appear to be coinciding limitations (Mazerolle et al, 2015), but what is lacking in the literature is an

evaluation of how schools manage to provide adequate medical coverage. Resources are available, but there is question as to whether these schools consider or even utilize them.

Objective: The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the funding techniques and budget sources of high school athletic training clinics from the perspective of both private and public ATCs and athletic directors (ADs). Design: Grounded-theory qualitative study

Setting: Online open-ended interview questions and 20-minute semi-structured telephone interviews. Patients or Other Participants: Part- and full-time ATCs and ADs in public, private, and charter high schools were recruited for the study. They were either directly employed by the school or contracted with outreach services. Only professionals in the state of Nevada were allowed to participate.

Data Collection and Analysis: The online open-ended interview questions were modeled after Swanton and Peer’s questionnaire (2015) for participants to complete. Participants with insight that was deemed as particularly insightful were contacted for a telephone interview for (~20 minutes). Phone interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim to optimize trustworthiness. A general inductive analysis and open-coding from a grounded theory approach was utilized to categorize the data from initial categories into general themes.

Results: Money discrepancies, creativity in healthcare delivery, and overall community influence were the three major themes that emerged from the data. They illustrated the multi-faceted and challenging factors that affect athletic training practice.

Keywords

athletic training; budget; healthcare; private; public; qualitative

Disciplines

Economics | Kinesiology | Sociology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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