The relationship between the values of sport scholarships given by private Lebanese universities to student-athletes and their rankings in the leagues

Abstract

The aim of the study was to compare between two different private Lebanese Universities the values of sports scholarships given to their respective student-athletes and to analyze the relationship between the values of the sports scholarships and the sports rankings achieved. Methods – 2 private Lebanese universities participated in our study: The University of Balamand (UOB) and the Saint Joseph University of Beirut (USJ). With the approval of both universities, we contacted their sports directors to collect the needed data from the 2015-2016 till 2018-2019 academic years. Spearman rank order method was utilized to analyze the correlation between the distribution of the sports scholarships and the sports rankings achieved. Results – According to the Spearman rank order method, there was no correlation between the distribution of the sports scholarships and the sports rankings achieved for the 2 universities from 2015-2016 till 2018-2019 academic years. Based on the Spearman rank order method, we selected 3 identical kinds of sports from both universities (UOB and USJ) in order to compare the correlation between the budget distribution and the sports rankings. The selected data are classified into 2 groups: The first group includes Basketball Men and Volleyball Men for 4 academic years from 2015/2016 till 2018/2019. The second group includes Futsal Women for 3 academic years from 2016/2017 till 2018/2019. As a result, there was no significant correlation in the 2 groups regarding the budget distribution and the sports rankings achieved. Moreover, Students t-test was performed to detect the significant differences between the 2 groups (Ranked/Non-ranked). However, after acquiring the sports rankings of both universities, we realized that there were no differences regarding the sports scholarships distribution between the Ranked and Nonranked teams. Conclusion – The values of sports scholarships distributed by the University of Balamand and Saint Joseph University of Beirut to their student-athletes were collected to study their relationships with the achieved sports rankings from the academic years 2015-2016 to the academic years 2018-2019. When comparing these two features, there was no correlation between the sports scholarships distribution and the sports rankings in these two universities.