Soc 209 Exam 2

Front 1

What is the central question the author is trying to answer or explore?

Back 1

To what extent does participation in high school interscholastic sports contribute to male violence?

Front 2

Is this question broken down into a series of smaller questions or hypotheses?

Back 2

Social control hypothesis, social learning hypothesis, and masculinity theories

Front 3

Social control hypothesis

Back 3

This hypothesis suggests that conventional bonds have a constraining influence on delinquency. In other words, because interscholastic sports are institutionally sanctioned activities, they should increase bonds to conventional society and reduce antisocial behavior. Participation should increase attachment between athletes and teammates, it should reduce tendencies towards aggression and delinquency, it should build commitment to non-deviant behavior, and it should increase involvement in conventional activities and therefore decrease the time available for antisocial behavior

Front 4

Social learning hypothesis

Back 4

This hypothesis posits that individuals learn antisocial values and techniques within intimate social relationships.”Positive deviance” is learned in sports such as striving for distinction, sacrificing for The Team, playing through pain, and refusing to accept limits. This suggests that these norms may lead athletes to do harmful things that are motivated by the team. Athletes may perceive violence and intimidation as acceptable off the field.

Front 5

Masculinity Theory

Back 5

Aggressiveness and feeling of superiority may be endemic to sport culture and increase violence among athletes. “Hypermasculine” contact sports may lead to more aggression/violence. Boys construct ideas of masculinity based on contact sports.

Front 6

What are the major INDEPENDENT variables in the analysis? How are they operationalized?

Back 6

(1) Individual’s sports participation:

Asked respondents about participation in 12 athletic activities (baseball/softball, basketball, field hockey, football, ice hockey, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, volleyball, wrestling, and other sports)
Measured in two ways: (1) 1= respondent answered yes to participating in sports 0=no (2) Measured independent effects of football, basketball, wrestling, and tennis


(2) Friends’ sports participation:

used 6 variables to operationalize: the proportion of respondents’ male friends who play football, basketball, baseball, wrestling, tennis, or another sport


(3) Prior levels of violence, delinquency, and risk behaviors:

Prior violence: an indication that the respondent was involved in a fight within twelve months prior to the survey
Prior delinquency: a mean index of six minor delinquency items (smoking, drinking, getting drunk, skipping school, doing something dangerous on a dare, and racing a vehicle)

Front 7

What are the major DEPENDENT variables in the analysis? How are they operationalized?

Back 7

Risks of male serious fighting:

Operationally defined by students' self-reported violence of getting into a serious fight within 12 months of the in-home interview. This variable was presented using a binary measure (0=reported not fighting; 1=reported fighting 1 or more times)

Front 8

What important concepts and terms are used in asking and answering the central questions (and hypotheses) in the article?

Back 8

Hegemonic masculinity, risks of males serious fighting, positive deviance, social control hypothesis, social learning hypothesis, masculinity theory

Front 9

Hegemonic masculinity

Back 9

The cultural patterns of action that allow some men to maintain dominance over females and subordinated males

Front 10

Risks of male serious fighting

Back 10

Operationally defined by self-reported violence of getting into a serious fight within 12 months of the in-home interview

Front 11

Positive deviance

Back 11

the concept of deviance resulting from norms learned in a positive setting like a sports team

Front 12

What is (are) the source(s) of data used to answer the question?

Back 12

The source of data is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based, nationally representative study of American adolescents in grades 7-12 collected by Add Health from 1994 to 2001

The sample consists of 75,871 students in 129 schools. Of these students, 14,396 completed both the in-school and in-home surveys.

Front 13

What is the sample used to answer the questions of interest?

Back 13

6,397 males who completed both surveys and attended schools with adequate network measures

Front 14

What methods are used to analyze the data?

Back 14

Survey-corrected logistic regressions are used to predict the binary measure of serious fighting.

Front 15

Results

Back 15

Results suggest that sports fail to protect males from interpersonal violence, contrary to the social control hypothesis. The results were consistent with the social learning and masculinity theories.

Contact sports like football and wrestling are positively associated with male serious fighting. Playing football (a hyper-masculine contact sport) increases the risk of getting into a fight by 40% compared to nonathletes; wrestlers are 45% more likely. In contrast, basketball and baseball do not show any relationship to fighting and tennis actually shows a negative relationship as playing tennis reduces the risk of fighting by 35%.
Also, being embedded in an “all-football” network increased risk for serious fighting. In other words, males whose friends play football are more likely to fight than other males.