Athlete Surveillance and Data Privacy: A Scoping Review of Privacy Concerns Related to Wearable Technologies in Collegiate Sports

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Richards, David
Area of Honors:
Enterprise Technology Integration
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Kelley Cotter, Thesis Supervisor
Carleen Maitland, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Wearable technology
college sports
collegiate athletics
wearables
data privacy
governance
surveillance
ethics
biometric data
monitoring
Abstract:
This thesis presents a scoping review of privacy concerns surrounding the use of wearable technologies in collegiate athletics in the United States. As wearable devices such as GPS trackers, smart bands, heart monitors, and other biometric monitoring tools become more ubiquitous in the domain of U.S. college sports, they offer potential benefits for performance optimization, enhanced recovery, and injury prevention. However, these wearable technologies and their associated data practices also raise significant questions pertaining to privacy, consent, data ownership, and institutional control. In order to examine how these issues have been previously addressed in scholarship, the present study reviewed fifteen sources and analyzed the privacy concerns identified within them according to Daniel Solove’s taxonomy of privacy. The findings show the existing literature most commonly emphasizes privacy concerns related to surveillance (n = 14), exclusion (n = 12), secondary use (n = 10), increased accessibility (n = 9), decisional interference (n = 8), disclosure (n = 7), and intrusion (n = 6). These concerns underscore a consistent tension between performance optimization and athlete autonomy. This review also shows that this field remains limited in methodological diversity and sampling breadth. For instance, there are relatively few existing empirical studies, and those studies primarily employ qualitative approaches and focus on small participant pools. By consolidating and systematically organizing a fragmented body of literature and the privacy concerns found within it, this thesis provides a clearer foundation for future research and contributes to broader discussions surrounding governance, ethics, and athlete rights in the rapidly evolving landscape of wearable technology in U.S. collegiate athletics.