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A limitation of most prior research concerning socialization via sport has been a reliance on cross-sectional/correlational designs. Thus, one purpose of the study was to overcome this limitation by implementing a longitudinal design. A second purpose was to test the efficiency of two theories—self-selection and interaction—that attempt to explain value, attitudinal, and/or behavioral differences often noted between elite and casual athletes, and between athletes and nonathletes. Instructional and competitive league soccer players were interviewed before and after their seasons to ascertain changes in their sport-related value orientations; this procedure was repeated the following season with the competitive league players. The data for the subsamples revealed (a) some initial differences in value orientations, and (b) a slight modification of values during participation over the course of a season. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the study’s purposes, future research, and their meaning for youth sport practitioners.

The official value orientation of international sport emphasizes common good causes such as international understanding, peace, friendship, and Olympic solidarity. However, when nations compete in international sport events their operational goals are defined in terms of national interests and materialized in terms of competitive success. This is a basic dilemma and contradiction in international sport, and it is clearly evident in the Olympic movement. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) operates on the basis of common good causes, the national Olympic committees (NOCs) operate on the basis of national interests. In fact, the NOCs are even reluctant to supervise any rules and resolutions interfering with this national pursuit of success, let alone recognize the common good values in international sport. In this paper it is hypothesized that international sport is vulnerable to a legitimation crisis because it is premised on values that are incompatible with the values and policies that guide involvement at the national level. This hypothesis is based on the results of a semantic differential pilot study through which the basic ideological concepts of international sport are compared with the operational concepts underlying national sport systems. It is concluded that since we know very little about the meanings people assign to international sport, it is difficult to make statements about the consequences of international events.

Advertisers put considerable effort into developing messages that appeal to a persuadable target group. Based on the characteristics of these audiences, as well as a number of situational factors, advertising messages can be described as primarily informational or emotional. The purpose of this study was to test how the value orientation of a sports-related event and situational involvement moderate consumers’ information processing and attitudes toward the event advertisement. Consistent with dual-process theory, the results indicate that, when dealing with information about a utilitarian sports career-fair event, consumers rely on either effortful or effortless processing depending on their level of situational involvement. However, consumers use both effortful and effortless processing for a hedonic sporting event. This study extends the dual-process theory and planning models by suggesting that a traditional, theory-based dichotomous dual-process model should give way to a co-occurrence model for hedonic sporting events in high-involvement situations.