The Relationship between Participation in Interscholastic Sports and Delinquency in American High Schools

Does participation in interscholastic sports have positive or negative relationships with adolescent delinquency? Though an arguable question, few empirical studies have focused on this topic. This study therefore, attempts to answer two questions. First, do different kinds of interscholastic sports have varied relations with the tendancy toward of adolescent delinquency? Second, does participation in one kind of interscholastic sport have variou effects on different forms of adolescent delinquency? This study used data from the first follow-up survey of the National Education Longitudinal Study in 1990 which consisted of 20,706 high school students. This research included three dependent variables: misbehavior at school, engagement in physical fighting at school, and the use of marijuana: Participation in different kinds of interscholastic sports was the independent variable. Moreover, the method of nested multiple and logistic regression was employed to analyze the collected data. The results displayed two meaningful findings. First, participation in different kinds of interscholastic sports had various relationships with adolescent deviant behavior. Secondly, participation in the same sport had various associations with different types of deviant behavior committed. This could possibly be attributed to the different activities and processes (i.e., rules, construction, practice, etc.) associated with each sport. Clearly, various relationships between participation in different kinds of interscholastic sports and adolescent delinquency were. Suggestions for future research are also presented in this study.

關鍵字

interscholastic sports ； delinquency

並列摘要

青少年參加學校運動代表隊是否能夠有效防制偏差行爲的發生，或者是增加青少年偏差行爲的發生率？這是一個非常爭議的問題。只可惜，很少經驗研究就此一議題作詳細的探討。所以本研究嘗試回答下列兩個問題：（一）參與不同類型的學校運動代表隊是否與青少年偏差行爲存在著不同的關聯性？（二）參與某一類型的學校運動代表隊是否與不同種類的偏差行爲存在著不同的關聯性？本研究主要使用一九九○美國國家教育長期追蹤資料庫，其中樣本包括20,706名中學生。本研究包涵三個依變項：違反校規行爲、暴力行爲、吸食大麻；而自變項則是參與不同類型的學校運動代表隊。在分析資料數據方面，主要採用巢式多元迴歸及邏辑迴歸統計分析技巧。研究結果顯示，參與不同類型的學校運動代表隊與青少年偏差行爲有著不同程度的關聯性。其次，參與某一類型的學校運動代表隊與不同種類的偏差行爲也存在著不同程度的關聯性。這些發現可能暗示著不同類型的運動項目有著不同的内容特性、訓練形式及比賽規則，所以導致與青少年偏差行爲的發生產生不同程度的關聯性。在研究報告中也對未來相關研究提出具體建議。