Factors Driving School Spirit

College athletics have long served as an outlet through which university students across the country demonstrate their school spirit. Due to the direct relation between school spirit and the financial status of collegiate athletic programs, Patrick Quinn examined the driving forces behind school spirit by distributing an online survey to a sample of 45 undergraduate students at the University of Maryland and content analysis of university attendance rates and ticket sales.

The results of Quinn’s study suggest that several factors drive school spirit: whether or not the participant has a personal tie to a Maryland athlete, the participant’s geographical tie to Maryland athletics, the participant’s knowledge level of Maryland athletics, the participant’s history of athletic participation, the participant’s sense of belonging, success level of athletic team, non-live attendance at events effects, news following of Maryland athletics level, social media activity.

Most notably, this study suggests that students who played a sport in high school tend to have more school spirit than those who did not. Results also suggest that students who have knowledge of Maryland athletics and watch Maryland athletics on television or online have more school spirit.

“People who go to Maryland athletic events for social reasons and who use social media to follow Maryland sports also tend to have higher school spirit,” Quinn said.

Quinn said that he was very surprised to find that students who use social media tend to have more school spirit. “It is not something concrete to judge school spirit but it was definitely interesting to see the extent to which students talk about Maryland sports without actually watching the game or being in attendance,” he said.

Students who grew up in Maryland also tend to have more school spirit according to the study. “College sports are something that people are raised on,” Quinn said.

Quinn’s study also indicated that the success of the university’s sports teams did not impact the level of a student’s school spirit. “This result was very interesting because the media tends to blame a team’s on-field performance for low ticket sales and poor attendance,” he said.

Due to the subjective nature of measuring school spirit, Quinn said that the most difficult part of conducting this study was determining which factors he would observe.

“I already knew that one single factor does not drive school spirit but I found it very difficult to determine how to weigh each factor and how to pin point which factors were most important,” he said.