Balancing academics and athletics: Examining academic and athletic identity profiles in a large sample of NCAA Division I college athletes

with an extremely low academic identity and a low athletic identity. The identity profiles differed significantly across the measures of academic and athletic performance, achievement motivation (mastery, performance, task, and ego goals), satisfaction, and ethical conduct (academic misconduct, homework cheating, plagiarism, test cheating, sportspersonship, gamesmanship, instrumental aggression) in Study 1, as well as autonomous motivation (competence, relatedness, value/usefulness, effort/importance), academic persistence, and athletic passion (harmonious, obsessive) in Study 2. Taken together, findings provided evidence of both the multidimensional nature of college athletes' identities and the heterogeneity of the college athlete population. Overall, these findings point to the importance of concurrent examination of academic and athletic identities as separate yet interrelated dimensions in research studies. This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of college athletes' experiences and provides a more nuanced perspective on their identity development.