SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT JOURNAL 1987. 4, 37-47

The Sport Participation-Social Class Relationship Among a Selected Sample

of Female Adolescents

Cynthia A. Hasbrook University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This study proposed and tested a theoretical explanation of how social class background influences sport participation. Two theoretical constructs of so- cial class were operationalized within the context of sport participation and tested to determine how well they explained the social class-sport participa- tion link: life chances/economic opportunity set (the distribution of material goods and services), and life-styleslsocial psychological opportunity set (values, beliefs, and practices). Life chances consisted of the availability and usage of sport equipment, facilities or club memberships, and instruction. Life-styles consisted of selected parental achievement and gender role ex- pectations that encourage, fail to encourage, or discourage sport participa- tion. Social class background was determined by father's occupation as ranked in the Duncan Socioeconomic Index. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a stratified random sample of high school students, with some questionnaires eliminated to control for cultural andlor racial differences and variation in parental influence. The construct validity of the instrument was supported by factor analytic results. The test-retest reliability of the ques- tionnaire was r = .956. Partial correlation analyses revealed that while in- dividual life chancesleconomic opportunity set variables explained a greater portion of the relationship between sport participation and social class back- ground than did the individual variables of life-styleslsocial psychological opportunity set, a combination of all three economic opportunity set vari- ables and two social-psychological opportunity set variables accounted for more than 50% of the relationship between sport and class.

A two-faceted, empirical relationship between sport participation and social class consistently has been reported, portraying (a) degree of sport participation as a function of level of social class (Collins, 1972; Greendorfer, 1974, 1978; Gruneau, 1975; Hasbrook, Greendorfer, & McMullen, 198 1 ; Lueschen, 1969; Webb, 1969), and (b) specific type of sport participation as a function of specific

Direct all correspondence to Cynthia A. Hasbrook, Department of Human Kinetics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201.

37

level of social class (i.e., a predominance of upper class membership among in- dividual and dual sport participants, and lower social class membership among team and combative sport participants) (Greendorfer, 1974, 1978; Loy, 1969, 1972; Lueschen, 1969; Malumphy, 1970). Although this sport-class relationship has been noted by several investigators, there are few theoretical explanations for it, and none have been supported by empirical data (see Anderson & Stone, 1979; Gruneau, 1981; Lueschen, 1969; Zellman, 1980). The purpose of this study was to propose and empirically test an explanation of the relationship between degree of sport participation and level of social class background.

The Sport Participation-Social Class Relationship

Explanation of the sport participation-social class relationship is not simple, because the concept of social class is not a simple one. A family's social class is indicative of its members' life chances or economic opportunity set (Botto- more, 1956). In general, the higher a family's social class, the greater its mem- bers' capacities for possession and access to material goods and services, thereby increasing their life chances/economic opportunity set. A family's social class is also associated with a particular life-style or social psychological opportunity set (Bottomore, 1956). Historically, upper social class families subscribe to cer- tain values, beliefs, and practices that differ from those of lower social class fa- milies. Thus, the concept of social class consists of two distinct categories of variables: (a) those associated with material goods and services (economic op- portunity set variables) and (b) those associated with values, beliefs, and prac- tices (social-psychological opportunity set variables). Theoretical explanations of the sport participation-social class relationship have been derived from con- ceptual definitions of social class that encompass only one or the other of these two sets of variables. That is, such explanations are usually based on either the economic opportunity set notion, which Gruneau (1981) has referred to as struc- tural explanation, or the social-psychological opportunity set notion, which he calls the cultural explanation.

The economic opportunity set notion suggests that upper class individuals have a greater number of material goods and services specific to sport (e.g., sport facilities, equipment, programs, and instruction) than lower class individuals. Con- sequently, upper class individuals are presented with greater life chances for par- ticipation in sport. Gruneau (1981) has suggested that structural explanations for the lower classes' underrepresentation in sport in the form of economic barriers (e.g., lack of sporting equipment, facilities, and instruction) may explain more than the cutural explanations, which are based on social class differences in values, beliefs, and practices associated with sport participation.

A few social-psychological opportunity set explanations have also been proposed for the overrepresentation of upper classes and underrepresentation of lower classes in sport. Most of these have been based on the assumption that there are different sport socialization practices among the upper, in contrast to the lower, social classes as a result of the different values each class places on sport partici- pation. For example, Kraus (1965) suggested that the poor, in contrast to the rich, do not value fitness or physical recreation and consequently reject sporting activities. Gruneau (1975), in a post hoc discussion of the overrepresentationlun- derrepresentation pattern reported in his study of Canada Games athletes and in

SPORT PARTICIPATION-SOCIAL CLASS 39

Lueschen's (1969) study of German Federal Republic sports club participants, proposed that the high drive for achievement typically associated with the upper classes in Canada and Germany may have been partially responsible for the up- per classes' overrepresentation in sport-on the assumption that a higher empha- sis on achievement leads to a greater valuation of sport participation as a means of achievement. Anderson and Stone (1979) have also suggested that the middle strata of society strive for instrumental goal achievement through participation in sport, and that achievement motivation may partially explain the sport varticivation-social class link.

Associated with explanations of the overrepresentation of the upper class and underrepresentation of the lower classes in sport are explanations for the ac- centuation of this pattern among female sport participants. Several studies have reported that a significantly greater percentage of female athletes come from up- per social class backgrounds while a significantly smaller percentage come from lower class backgrounds in comparison with their male counterparts (Gruneau, 1975, 1981; Freischlag, 1981; Lueschen, 1969; Pavia & Jaques, 1976). In an attempt to explain this gender difference, Lueschen (1969) took a social- psychological approach, suggesting that females from the lower social classes faced greater barriers to sport participation than their male counterparts. Lueschen suggested that these barriers centered around lower class families' beliefs that women and girls should not be involved in activities outside the home. And Zellman (1980), although lacking empirical support for his notions, suggested that women from the lower social classes were not frequently sport participants, for both economic and social-psychological opportunity set explanations.

According to Zellrnan, lower class girls can financially afford only the more strenuous contact and highly competitive sports that are typically consid- ered masculine sports (e.g., basketball, football, baseball). ~ecause of the physi- cal nature of these sports and their masculine social connotations, lower class girls choose not to participate in sport. Zellman also suggested that lower class girls have less time to participate in sport because of the demands for domestic help placed on their time (e.g., babysitting and housekeeping) in contrast to their middle- and upper-class counterparts whose families can afford to hire domestic help.

With this in mind, the following explanation of the sport participation-social class relationship was proposed and tested: Factors associated with a family's social class prescribe, to some extent, the degree to which that family socializes its children into sport. Such factors fall into two categories: (a) sport-specific, economic opportunity set (E0S)-the availability of material goods and services specific to sport including facilities, equipment, and programs/instruction; and (b) sport-specific, social-psychological opportunity set (SPOS)-the parental values, beliefs, and practices associated with gender role and achievement ex- pectations that tend to encourage, fail to encourage, or discourage childhood sport involvement.

Method Subjects

The sample was drawn from the students enrolled in a 4-year high school on the central coast of California. The high school comprised 2,153 students from

40 Hasbrook

diverse social class backgrounds, their racial composition being approximately 60% white, 33 % SpanishILatin American, 5 % black, 1 % Oriental, and 1 % other.

To assure an adequate amount of variance in sport participation and allow for the possibility that an accentuated pattern of the suspected relationship might exist among female students, the sample was stratified by athletic status (i.e., athletelnonathlete) and sex. Since phys&al education was the only mandatory sub- ject required of all students, this domain represented the best source for obtain- ing a stratified random sample of students. Not only were required physical education classes coeducational. but some class enrollments were limited to mem- bers of athletic teams. Attempts were made to obtain a balanced number of male athletes and nonathletes and female athletes and nonathletes.

A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 526 subjects. All auestionnaires were returned but 186 were eliminated to control for cultural andlor ;acid differences and variation in parental influence. Only those questionnaires completed by white children whose fathers and mothers were both present in the home through the children's 1 lth birthday were retained for analysis. The result- ing sample consisted of 199 females and 141 males.

Instrumentation

A self-administered, fixed-alternative questionnaire was constructed. Sport participation was operationally defined to include the dimensions of duration (years of formal sport involvement in community, junior high school andlor high school sport), intensity (number of sports participated in), level (community, junior high school, or high school competition), and the quality of involvement (number of awards for athletic performance). An overall degree of sport participation score was derived by summing the number of years that subjects participated in com- munity, junior high school, and high school sports, and the number of awards received.

Social class background was determined by the father's occupation, as ranked in the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI) (Duncan, 1961). The Duncan SEI presents a continuous, interval-scaled assessment of social status that takes into consideration the income, education, and occupational prestige of an individu- al. According to several sociologists and social psychologists, the Duncan SEI is one of the most reliable and valid measures of social class developed to date (Featherman & Hauser, 1977; Mueller & Parcel, 1981).

Sport-specific EOS was operationally defined to encompass ownership of sport equipment, access to or use of sport facilities andlor club memberships and cost, and sport instruction received and its cost. Subjects were asked to choose from a list of sport equipment items and from a list of sport facilities those pieces of equipment they owned and those facilities they had access to or used. Subjects were additionally requested to list their sport club memberships and indicate which memberships, if any, had a membership fee. Cost of membership was measured as a dichotomous variable on a nominal scale, "zero" representing no cost and "one7' representing some cost. Finally, subjects listed the sports clinics, camps, or other formal means by which they had obtained sport instruction outside of school sports and physical education classes, and also indicated which forms of instruction cost money. The numbers of pieces of equipment owned, facilities used, sport club membership and their costs, and sport instruction/cost (measured

SPORT PARTICIPATION-SOCIAL CLASS 41

by the number of clinics, camps, or other formal settings attended) served as the EOS variables.

Sport-specific SPOS was defined to include parental expectations of chil- dren's achievement, and parental expectations of children's gender roles. Paren- tal expectations of achievement were defined to include degree of importance placed on children's success in general, and degree of encouragement to partici- pate in sport. Degree of parental importance placed on children's success in general was measured by one item that asked subjects to indicate importance on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Degree of parental encourage- ment to participate in sport was measured by several items asking subjects to indicate how much verbal encouragement they received to participate in sport, the degree to which their parents played with them, the degree to which their parents watched them engage in sport, and the degree to which their parents helped teach them sport skills. Each of these items was measured on the same Likert scale. These items were summed to yield a single measure of parental encourage- ment.

Parental gender role expectations were further defined to include degree of parental approval of sport participation, and degree of parental approval of fe- male role-appropriate activities. Degree of parental approval of sport participa- tion consisted of the sum of 14 items requiring subjects to indicate how much their parents approved of 14 specific types of sport. Approval was again mea- sured on a Likert scale. Finally, degree of parental approval of gender role- appropriate activities consisted of the sum of five items requiring subjects to in- dicate how much their parents approved of their participation in four female sports (volleyball, swimming, gymnastics, tennis) and in music and art, with approval again measured on a Likert scale. The construct validity of the questionnaire was demonstrated through factor analytic techniques (Hasbrook, 1984). The overall test-retest reliability of the instrument was r = .956, p = .01.

Results and Discussion

To determine how well EOS and SPOS explained the sport participation- social class relationship, it was first necessary to establish the existence of such a relationship. Therefore, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were calculated for the male and female subsamples. Presented in Table 1 are the fre- quency and percentage of Duncan SEI scores within each of three ranges for the male and female subsamples; Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations associated with sport participation and social class background for the two sub- samples.

Surprisingly, no relationship between sport participation and social class background was found among the male subjects (r = .035, p = .347). However, a weak-moderate and highly significant relationship was found among the female subjects (r = .265, p & .01). The lack of a correlation between sport participa- tion and social class background among the male subsample does not appear to have been the function of a small degree of variability in either variable. In fact, the variability associated with male sport participation was almost twice that of female participation (see Hasbrook, 1986 for additional discussion of these find- ings). Given this lack of relationship between males' social class background and

Table 1

Hasbrook

Frequency and Percentage of Duncan SEI Scores Within Three Ranges for Male and Female Subsamples

Duncan SEI ranges 1-33 34-66 67-99

Males (n = 141) 40(28.4)' 60(42.5) 41(29.1) Females (n = 199) 59(29.6) 73(36.7) 67(33.7)

*( ) = percentages

Table 2

Means and Standard Deviations by Gender

Males Females (n = 141) (n = 199)

Sport participation M 1 1.23 SD 11.65

Sport class background M 49.25 SD 27.79

their sport participation, the discussion here will be limited to the female sub- sample.

To determine how well the EOS and SPOS variables explained the sport participation-social class relationship, Pearson product-moment correlation coeffi- cients among the EOS, SPOS, and social class variables were computed (see Table 3), and then a series of partial correlations were conducted between social class background and sport participation, controlling for the seven EOS and SPOS vari- ables. In general, the greater the reduction in the zero-order correlation coefficient between sport participation and social class background when controlling for the EOS and SPOS variables, the more powerful the proposed explanation of the social class-sport participation link.

Initially, first-order partial correlations were calculated to determine what the individual contribution of each EOS and SPOS variable was to the relation- ship between sport and class. As shown in Table 4, the individual EOS variables appeared to account for more of the relationship between sport participation and class than did the individual SPOS variable. This finding lends empirical support to Gruneau's (1981) suggestion that structural (economic) explanations for the underrepresentation of the lower classes may explain more than the cultural (social- psychological) explanations. However, such an interpretation warrants caution.

Table 3 V)

Pearson Product-Moment Intercorrelation Matrix for Selected Variables Among Female Subsample (n = 179) z ?

Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1 = Father's occupation; 2 = Sport facilitieslclub memberships; 3 = Sport equipment; 4 = Sport instructionlprograms; 5 = Degree of parental & approval of sport participation; 6 = Parental approval of female gender role appropriate activities; 7 = Degree of parental importance placed on rn children's success in general; 8 = Degree of parental encouragement to participate in sport. *p 4 .O1

Table 4 Zero and First Order Partial Correlation Coefficients

Females .2645 .I832 .I809 .2129 .2654 .2701 .2627 .2343 (n = 179) (.001)* (.006) (.007) (.002) (.002) (.001) (.001) (.001)

F = 1.4437** F = 1.4621** F = 1.2423** F = 1.0000** F = .9792 F = 1.0068** F = 1.1288**

'Alpha levels are indicated in parentheses. **First-order partial correlation coefficient significantly different from zero-order correlation coefficient @ 4 .01) o = Father's occupation; 1 = Degree of sport participation; 2 = Sport facilitieslclub memberships; 3 = Sport equipment; 4 = Sport instructionlpro- grams; 5 = Degree of parental approval of sport participation; 6 = Parental approval of female gender role appropriate activities; 7 = Degree of parental importance placed on children's success in general; 8 = Degree of parental encouragement to participate in sport. f;

44 Hasbrook

Although one may assume that social-psychological opportunity set simply isn't as strong an explanation as economic opportunity set, there are at least two other feasible reasons for the finding just reported.

First, cultural or social-psychological opportunity set may not have been adequately measured, and thus its failure to explain much of the relationship be- tween sport and class is not surprising. Second, the Duncan SEI, although based upon education, income, and occupational prestige, may reflect more of an eco- nomic measure of social class than a social-psychological measure. If this were the case, one would expect the cultural or social-psychological opportunity set explanation to account for little of the sport participation-social class relation- ship. It should be noted that, unfortunately, all of the recognized measures of SES are occupation-based measures-Hollingshead Four Factor Index of Social Status (Hollingshead, 1975), Seigel1965 NORC Prestige Scale (Hauser & Feather- man, 1977), Duncan SEI (Duncan, 1961)-and consequently reflect economic factors more directly than social-psychological ones.

Gruneau (1982) has proposed that structural (economic) explanations of the sport-class relationship may be linked to cultural (social-psychological) ex- planations of the relationship. For example, if an individual or a family does not have the means or opportunity to purchase sport equipment, instruction, and/or facility time, the individual or the family may develop values and attitudes that do not favor or emphasize sport participation; however, the individual or family who has these opportunities may be more prone to develop positive values and attitudes about sport participation. It is interesting that in this study one of the four SPOS variables, degree of parental encouragement to participate in sport, was significantly correlated with all three of the EOS variables (see Table 3). While such correlations do not demonstrate a cause-effect relationship as Gruneau has implied, they do demonstrate that the family's ability to provide sport equip- ment, facilities, and instruction is related to its encouragement of sport participa- tion. At the least, the influences of the EOS and SPOS variables do not occur independently from one another but concomitantly. Therefore, the most appropri- ate means for determining the explanatory power of the proposed variables was to determine what combination of them would best account for the link between sport participation and social class background.

All possible combinations of EOS and SPOS variables were entered into first- through seventh-order partial correlation calculations to determine which variables best accounted for the sport-class relationship. As shown in Table 5, five variables including all three EOS and two of the four SPOS variables emerged

Table 5

Zero and Fifth Order Partial Correlation Coefficients

Females (n = 179)

'Alpha levels are indicated in parentheses. **Significantly different from zerwrder correlation @ < .01). See Note, Table 4

SPORT PARTICIPATION-SOCIAL CLASS 45

as the set of variables that best explained the sport-class relationship. One vari- able reflecting parental gender-role expectation (parental approval of sport par- ticipation), and one variable reflecting parental achievement expectations (degree of importance parents placed on children's success in general), in combination with the amount of sport equipment owned, sport facilities used, club member- ships, and sport instruction received, accounted for more than 50% of the rela- tionship between sport participation and social class background. As may be noted, the F statistic associated with the fifth-order partial correlation coefficient indi- cated that the reduction in the zero-order correlation was significant at an alpha level of .0 1.

Summary and Conclusions

The results of this study suggest that life chances or economic opportunity set may play the larger role in explaining the relationship between degree of sport participation and social class background among the selected sample of female adolescents. Life-style or social-psychological opportunity set appears to play a smaller role. However, caution is warranted with this interpretation, as the con- cept of social-psychological opportunity set may not have been adequately as- sessed to clearly determine the extent of its role in explaining the relationship between sport participation and social class background. In addition, the mea- sure of social class employed in this study may reflect more of the economic or life chances aspects of social class than the social-psychological or life-style aspects of class, thereby limiting the degree to which social-psychological variables could have explained the relationship between sport and social class.

Given the lack of empirical research into explanations of the sport-class relationship, further investigation is warranted. Since past research findings about the degree of relationship, if any, between sport and social class have been some- what equivocal, investigators should continue to search for such a relationship. Gender and age of subjects should be considered, as gender differences in the relationship between sport and class have been reported (Hasbrook, 1986), and the influence of a youngster's social class background (parents' social class) on the opportunity to participate in sport may be quite different from the influence of an adult's own established social class on his or her opportunity to participate in sport.

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Portions of this paper were submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree under the direction of Susan L. Greendorfer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.