The recent COVID-19 pandemic created an unpredictable environment regarding the safety operations of sport and recreation organizations. This study was designed to examine how safety climate and organizational innovativeness could promote preferred organizational behavior outcomes in college campus sport and recreation centers. A total of 227 sport and recreation employees were recruited through the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association. With the collected data, we employed structural equation modeling to assess the research hypotheses. The results indicated that safety climate and innovativeness positively influenced job engagement, therefore leading to enhanced safety compliance and employee innovativeness, which ultimately resulted in higher levels of organizational performance. Peer safety compliance was also found to be a moderator in the relationship between job engagement and safety compliance. In this study, the authors offer new insights into sport organizational performance by emphasizing safety and innovation.
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The Roles of Perceived Safety Climate and Innovativeness in the Performance of Sport and Recreation Organizations
Minjung Kim, Han Soo Kim, Brent D. Oja, Jasamine Hill, Claire Zvosec, and Paul Yuseung Doh
The Dropout From Youth Sport Crisis: Not as Simple as It Appears
Anthony Battaglia, Gretchen Kerr, and Katherine Tamminen
Given the documented benefits associated with organized sport and thus the assumption that youth who leave sport are losing out on developmental benefits, dropout has been predominantly framed as a crisis to be solved. Throughout this paper we aimed to challenge the overarching narrative of youth dropout from organized sport as a negative outcome only by highlighting the complexity of youth sport experiences and participation patterns. First, we highlight the lack of conceptual clarity regarding the term “dropout” and question its relevance for describing youth’s sport experiences. Next, we discuss how declines in organized sport participation may reflect developmentally appropriate transitions in sport and broader physical activity for youth and across the life span. Finally, we suggest that, at times, disengagement may be a positive and protective outcome for youth when the sport environment is harmful. Recommendations for future research and practice are provided to advance the understanding of youth sport experiences and participation patterns.
NAK: Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Present, Embracing the Future
Melinda A. Solmon
Erratum. Are Preference and Tolerance Measured With the PRETIE-Q (Preference for and Tolerance of the Intensity of Exercise Questionnaire) Relevant Constructs for Understanding Exercise Intensity in Physical Activity? A Scoping Review
Kinesiology Review
Organizational-Level Factors That Influence Women Coaches’ Experiences
James P. Strode, Heidi M. Parker, and Shannon Kerwin
The purpose of this study was to identify the supports and barriers women coaches experience at the organizational level and to determine how those factors influence interpersonal- and individual-level factors within their coaching context. Nine women who coach high school basketball were interviewed at two time points and asked to reflect on organizational-level factors relative to their coaching position and how those factors have shaped their coaching experience over time. Based on the results of the interviews, two organizational-level factors were identified as barriers for participants: navigating inconsistent hiring practices and hypermasculine culture within school sport. The participants described organizational-level factors as influencing their experiences at both interpersonal (e.g., support from mentors, barriers related to the athletic directors) and individual (e.g., age, experience, sexual orientation) levels. The findings provide empirical support for specific organizational factors that contribute to interpersonal- and individual-level coach experiences. The power structures embedded in these associations are defined and discussed.
Female Physiology–Endocrinology: Education Is Lacking and Innovation Is Needed!
Anthony C. Hackney and Kirsty J. Elliott-Sale
Throughout their lifespans, women undergo unique endocrinological changes relative to their reproductive hormones. The influence of how the female sex steroid hormones have nonreproductive actions is a trending topic of great interest in the exercise–sports sciences, especially among women of reproductive age. Herein, we present several key points on our perspective for moving the study of this topic forward in the future. These are (a) encouraging researchers to pursue high-quality research on female physiology–endocrinology in the exercise–sports science setting, (b) the need for exercise–sports science educational curriculums at the university level to embrace the study of female physiology–endocrinology area, and (c) the need for innovation in the study of this topic. As such, we propose using research design models involving supraphysiological hormonal states in vivo, that is, pregnancy and in vitro fertilization treatment, to gain new insights on sex steroid hormonal actions in women. Herein, we provide the rationale for our recommendations as well as a brief physiological overview of these clinical states. We acknowledge, exercise sports sciences need more studies on women! But there is a need to “think outside the box” on this topic, and we encourage researchers to be unconventional, be bold, think creatively, and contemplate whether these supraphysiological hormonal states might give them insightful information on female physiology and ovarian sex steroid hormones actions.
An xG of Their Own: Using Expected Goals to Explore the Analytical Shortcomings of Misapplied Gender Schemas in Football
Sachin Narayanan and N. David Pifer
Although professional women’s football has benefitted from recent surges in popularity, challenges to progress and distinguish the sport persist. The gender-schema theory explains the tendency for individuals to hold female sports to male standards, a phenomenon that leads to negative outcomes in areas such as media representation and consumer perception. One area in which schemas have a more discreet effect is player and team performance, where the assumption that technical metrics developed in men’s football are transferable to women’s football remains unfounded. Using expected goals, a metric synonymous with the probability of a shot being scored, we highlight how variables important to shot quality and shot execution differ across gender, and how attempts to evaluate female footballers with models built on men’s data increase estimation errors. These results have theoretical and practical implications for the role they play in reframing schemas and improving the methods used to evaluate performance in women’s sports.
“What Have I Learned … ” and How Did I Get There? Reflection on a Research Journey
Marijke Taks
Receiving a lifetime award allows one to pause and reflect on one’s research journey. In the spirit of Earle Zeigler himself, I reflect on: “What I have learned … ” on my research journey, and more specifically on how I got there. My research has always focused on the interaction between sport, economics, and society and evolved: “From socio-economic impacts on sport participation to socio-economic outcomes of sport events.” To cover 40 years of research, I am highlighting how: (a) “triggers,” (b) “influencers,” and (c) “lessons learned” intermingled to push my research agenda forward. This reflection proved to be a very gratifying exercise. I can highly recommend it to all researchers. Perhaps, this can become a stepping stone to be promoted to the rank of Prof. Emeritus or Emerita. Either way, sharing our experiences may trigger, inspire, and advance the learning of future generations of sport management scholars.
Social Justice and Equity Imperatives—A Call to Action
Karen L. Francis and Kim C. Graber
Transforming Higher Education
Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko
In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that higher education in the United States is experiencing somewhat of a paradigm shift. We are being challenged to reform our institutions in order to respond to changing societal needs resulting from the fast-paced, digital transformation of industries, societal systems, and our daily lives. The member institutions of the American Academy of Kinesiology will need to think long and hard about how they will respond to these challenges. America’s universities have a responsibility to be a catalyst for the human-centric, technology-driven transformation of sectors such as transportation, agriculture, medicine, public health, clean energy, and manufacturing, among others, and to provide the vision, leadership, and innovation that such workforce transformation demands. Within the academy, we rightly take great pride in our long-standing contributions to the development and deployment of breakthrough discoveries and innovations that have contributed to the transformation of society. However, we have begun to realize that our institutions will need to bring this same commitment to innovation to our teaching, curricula, and instructional programs. Addressing these new areas of need and opportunity will require institutional innovation and reform, for us and for the postsecondary education sector generally. I believe that American Kinesiology Association member departments can play a significant role in the transformation of higher education at our institutions. I am delighted that the American Kinesiology Association has begun to think through how these changes will impact the future of our discipline. I am both optimistic and excited about the many ways that American Kinesiology Association member institutions will continue to play a leading role in the new higher education reality.