Value Based Recruiting: Pilot study

Little research exists around the decision-making process that high school golfers use when deciding where to play golf at college. This pilot study has two objectives: (1) to use peer-reviewed research to help identify the values that such athletes look for within a college golf team, and (2) to develop a new recruiting video to highlight such values. To the end, the study interviewed one high school athlete and did a best practice search of numerous college golf recruiting videos. The initial data found that three of Rokeach’s (1968) core values—family, community, and coach mentoring—were prominent. Next, the researcher implemented these values into a recruitment video targeted at high school golfers. Future work in this project will include testing the video’s messaging content’s effectiveness on a stratified sample of high school golfers.