Professional Master's Athletic Training Students' Career Influences Part I: Perceptions of Athletic Training

Context: As athletic training education transitions to a professional master's degree, understanding the perceptions professional master's athletic training students have of athletic training is important. Objective: To examine second-year professional master's students' perceptions of the athletic training profession, a career in the profession, and identify the factors that influence their perceptions. Design: Convergent mixed methods. Setting: Online surveys and individual phone interviews. Patients or Other Participants: A total of 80 second-year professional master's students (63 female, 13 male, 4 no response, age = 24.63 ± 2.29 years), who were enrolled in the final semester of their program in the spring of 2019, completed the online survey. Ten survey respondents completed the follow-up phone interviews. Data Collection and Analysis: A survey instrument and a semistructured interview guide were developed to answer the research questions. Both were validated externally by 3 independent researchers using a content-validity indexing tool. The data from the survey and interviews were woven together and merged to provide 1 comprehensive results section. Trustworthiness was established using triangulation, member checks, memos, and peer debriefing. Results: Three higher-order themes emerged from the data: (1) perceptions of the athletic training profession: lack of appreciation and awareness for the profession from others, rewarding profession, and dynamic profession; (2) perceptions of a career in athletic training: low pay, long hours and inconsistent schedules, and inability to have work-life balance; (3) factors influencing perceptions: clinical experiences and interactions with athletic trainers. Conclusions: Second-year professional master's athletic training students developed positive and negative perceptions about the profession and a career in the profession during their professional education experiences. The factors identified were professional socializing agents and should be considered when designing clinical education experiences.