NEW STUDY REVEALS ADVANTAGES FOR SPORT INVOLVED URBAN YOUTH

Release Date: July 9, 2005.

St. Petersburg, FL: Middle school youth residing in economically disadvantaged, high crime urban neighborhoods show evidence of more adaptive social and behavioral adjustment when they have been involved in an organized team sport during the past year, according to a findings from major new study released today. In one of the nation’s most ambitious, interview-based studies of sports and adjustment among a racially and ethnically diverse sample of at-risk boys and girls, researchers documented advantages favoring sports-involved youth in multiple realms, including self-esteem, social competence, and drug use. The report appears in the just-released June volume of the "Sociology of Sport Journal".

"There has always been widespread belief that involvement in sports benefits children, but the research evidence on this issue has actually been very mixed" explained one of the study's lead investigators, USF St. Petersburg psychology professor James P. McHale. Perplexed by divergent reports from prior investigations, some indicating positive effects of sport involvement but others suggesting links between sport involvement and difficulties with aggression, delinquency, and alcohol use, McHale and his colleagues -- psychology professor Penelope Vinden of Clark University, and student collaborators Loren Bush, Derek Richer, David Shaw and Brienne Smith -- interviewed 423 African American, Asian American, Latino and Caucasian seventh graders following the students' transition to middle school  to learn about their histories with organized team sports. Concerned that the majority of prior research studies had enrolled high school or college students, and had principally focused on rural or suburban dwelling youth, the researchers targeted their investigation on young people they suspected may benefit especially greatly from organized sport programs -- urban dwelling middle school children.

The method the researchers used to gather information was unusual, as they relied on time-consuming individual interviews with each child, conducted in children's Physical Education classes by researchers versed in the child's native language. Most prior research studies on children and sport had relied almost exclusively on survey data gathered in mass settings, such as school classrooms or cafeterias. The approach that McHale and his colleagues took in their study capitalized on the children's development of rapport with the interviewers before any questions were asked about self-confidence or delinquent activity. And then to preserve confidentiality for student responses to the more sensitive topics, children were allowed to complete surveys on self-esteem and delinquent activity privately, without sharing their responses with interviewers, and then to deposit their surveys in large ballot boxes in a centrally placed area of the gymnasium before completing the interviews. As children were interviewed, P.E. teachers provided survey evaluations of each child's interpersonal relations with peers.

The research team discovered that both boys and girls involved with organized team sports during the previous year reported higher levels of self-esteem than children who had not been involved with sports. Children who had taken part in team sports during the past year were judged by PE teachers to be more socially competent and less shy and withdrawn, and the researchers determined that these findings did not owe simply to the child's athleticism. Also of interest, sport involved children, including those who played contact sports, were not rated as more aggressive than other youth. The only finding bucking this positive picture was a hint that sport-involved youth engaged in a slightly broader range of delinquent activities (an average of about 7 different activities) than uninvolved youth (an average of about 6), though this finding fell short of statistical significance. But in a particularly provocative analysis, boys who had been involved with a sport during the year prior to their middle school transition were actually less likely to have ever experimented with marijuana than were uninvolved boys. 11% of the 7th grade boys who had not been involved with sports, but only 2% who had been involved, reported having experimented with the drug. A parallel protective effect was not found for girls.

The researchers were quick to caution their findings represent only an important first step in the study of the benefits and drawbacks of sport involvement for urban children, and should not be taken as an indication that sport involvement per se was responsible for the patterns of adjustment uncovered. "It's also possible that the children who remained involved with team sports into middle school were more confident and socially skilled to begin with", McHale pointed out. This said, the authors believe their findings will be of great interest to those who work with at risk youth, and give pause to recent cutback decisions made to the extra-curriculum, including organized team sports, by financially strapped urban school districts. "