Mind Over Matter: The Effect of a Mindfulness Intervention on the Academic Performance of Collegiate Student-Athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of a guided mindfulness meditation video on the academic performance of NCAA Division III student-athletes. The hypothesis was that participants from the experimental group would score better on the math computation and sentence comprehension subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test - Fifth Edition. Thirty participants were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental group practiced a mindfulness-based intervention before taking the subtests, while the control group watched a movie clip. The experimental group performed better on both subtests than the control group, but independent samples t-tests did not find statistically significant differences between the two groups. Follow-up studies with a larger sample size and a longer, more impactful mindfulness intervention may provide evidence as to whether the results from this study could have been significant given more statistical power.