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This investigation examined the ways in which, and the rationalizations with which, certain elite athletes juxtaposed the two role-identities of “Christian” and “athlete.” The data were obtained through in-depth interviews with current and former college and professional athletes associated with the Athletes-in-Action (AIA) organization in Western Canada (N=31: 23 males, 8 females). Initial analysis indicated considerable variability in the types of behavior that the athletes, as Christians, saw as acceptable in their sport environments, and yet the majority of these Christian-athletes did not appear to perceive any values-conflict between their Christian faith and their sporting practices. A more detailed examination using both a developmental and an interactionist perspective identified three more or less distinct types of accommodation to the normative expectations associated with the two role-identities (the segregated, selective, and committed types), each of which was associated with different consequences for the athletes’ own behaviors in sport, the values and attitudes they expressed, and the kinds of behaviors they perceived to be acceptable for Christian-athletes.

This study examined the impact of athletic participation on the academic, social, and social–psychological development of high school girls. A panel design and multistage sampling were used to assess the effect of athletic participation on perceived popularity, sex-role attitudes, psychological well-being, sociability, delinquency, academic achievement, educational aspiration, and extracurricular involvement. Data were obtained from transcript records and survey questionnaires administered during the subjects’ sophomore (1980) and senior (1982) years. Multiple regression analysis revealed that athletic participation was strongly related to extracurricular involvement, modestly related to perceived popularity, but only slightly related to delinquency and educational aspiration. Athletic participation was not related to psychological well-being or sex-role attitudes.

This paper has three main purposes: to undermine the dominant mythology surrounding football hooliganism, to propose an alternative conceptualization, and to highlight more general issues in the sociology of sport. The main basis for the study is a systematic survey of newspapers and FA minutes dating from the 1880s. Examination of the changing nature and extent of both the actual forms and the perception of spectator disorder by powerful outsiders is undertaken. Changes in the specific forms of spectator disorder, in perceptions of it and in attempts to control it, are more adequately understood in terms of class cultural conflict over ways of living in English society and by attempting to trace the antecedents of such conflict. Crucial in this regard has been a marked narrowing of the forms of behavior that are seen as consistent with public disorder—the defining and redefining of the limits of “decent” spectating reflects this process. Analysis of the more general issue of agency and structure is considered in the concluding remarks.

This study examines the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and sport and physical activity involvement at different stages of childhood and adolescence in Canada. From the previous literature on SES and health-related behavior, there was reason to test competing hypotheses on the direction of the predicted relationship. The data employed in our analyses came from Cycle 3 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth—1998–1999. Results, after controls, showed that SES was a significant predictor of sport involvement among 6–9 year-olds, but not for 10–15 year-olds. In the younger group, the higher the family SES the more frequent was the involvement. The effects of SES were much stronger for organized sport involvement than for participation in an informal context. The discussion bears on the implications of these findings for later adult physical activity and sport involvement and their ramifications for sport and exercise promotion policy.

An analysis of the 434 free communications by the 575 presenters at the first seven annual meetings of NASSS (1980–1986) reveals several important patterns and trends with respect to (a) number of free communications, (b) number of presenters, (c) presenter’s sex, (d) presenter’s institutional affiliation, and (e) dual and multiple authorships. A classification of the free communications by subject matter reveals which research topics are of current interest to sport sociologists. Implications of these data for understanding the current stage of development of the subfield are discussed in relation to Mullins’ four-stage developmental model for scientific specialties.

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the theoretical and empirical relationship between stages of moral reasoning and athletic aggression, and thus to offer a new model for the investigation of aggression in sport. In this pilot work, 22 female and 24 male basketball players’ moral reasoning levels were determined through the administration of Rest’s Defining Issues Test (DIT); athletic aggression measures included coaches’ ranking and ratings of player aggressiveness, and statistics pertaining to players’ fouls per season game. Significant judgment-action results were congruent with hypothesized relationships. The results are discussed within a cognitive-developmental framework.

To provide baseline information for future studies pertaining to sport participation and aging, this paper summarizes the literature on sport participation patterns across the life cycle, briefly describes the importance of analyzing aging as a social process, and argues that alternative theoretical frameworks including a life-span developmental perspective should be utilized in future studies. The paper also introduces a number of theoretical and methodological issues that should be addressed concerning research in this area, and raises a variety of research questions that must be pursued in order to better understand sport phenomena from a life cycle perspective, especially during the middle and later years of life.