Research Library

Disability Rights’ or ‘Wrongs?: The Claims of the International Paralympic Committee, the London 2012 Paralympics and Disability Rights in the UK

A central aspect of the vision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is that the Paralympic Movement is a vehicle for achieving ‘a more equitable society’ (IPC 2012a). Building upon the findings of an online survey conducted with disabled activists…

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Differences in Behavior, Psychological Factors, and Environmental Factors Associated with Participation in School Sports and Other Activities in Adolescence

This study examined whether participation in school team sports, exclusively or in combination with other extracurricular activities, is associated with higher levels of psychosocial functioning and healthy behavior than participation in other extracurricular activities alone or nonparticipation. The study sample…

Read OnDifferences in Behavior, Psychological Factors, and Environmental Factors Associated with Participation in School Sports and Other Activities in Adolescence

Differences in Adolescent Relationship Abuse Perpetration and Gender-Inequitable Attitudes by Sport Among Male High School Athletes

Abstract Purpose School-based athletic programs remain an important context for violence prevention efforts although a better understanding of how gender attitudes and abuse perpetration differ among athletes is needed. Methods We analyzed baseline survey data from the “Coaching Boys into…

Read OnDifferences in Adolescent Relationship Abuse Perpetration and Gender-Inequitable Attitudes by Sport Among Male High School Athletes

Deuce or Advantage? Examining Gender Bias in Online Coverage of Professional Tennis

Despite the increasing popularity of women’s sports, it has generally been found that female athletes receive less media coverage and are portrayed negatively with myriad gender-specific descriptors. Such biased representations warrant attention as they construct and reinforce traditional gender beliefs.…

Read OnDeuce or Advantage? Examining Gender Bias in Online Coverage of Professional Tennis

Determinants of Business Engagement With Regional Sport Events

Research question: Small-scale sports events provide commercial opportunities for regional communities, and yet research suggests that local commercial organisations are sometimes reticent to engage with sport event organisations to leverage benefits. This paper examines variation in business engagement with sport…

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Designing the Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls Church-Based Diabetes Prevention Program Through a Participatory Process

Background: The Healthy Bodies, Healthy Souls (HBHS) program aims to reduce diabetes risk among urban African Americans by creating healthy food and physical activity environments within churches. Participant engagement supports the development of applicable intervention strategies by identifying priority concerns,…

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Debunking Early Single Sport Specialisation and Reshaping the Youth Sport Experience: An NBA Perspective

The ‘common wisdom’ Among many parents and coaches, it is believed that early single sport specialisation is essential for future competitive sport success and, further, that a high level of achievement in youth sports predicts future success. Owing to these…

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Dancing With Derrida: Deconstructing Sports Women’s Performances on Dancing with the Stars and Mira Quien Baila

Feminists have long wrestled with the binary of gender difference in sport, employing diverse theoretical and empirical approaches to understand how difference is constructed, maintained and challenged. In this article, we engage with Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction and différance…

Read OnDancing With Derrida: Deconstructing Sports Women’s Performances on Dancing with the Stars and Mira Quien Baila

Current Health-Related Quality of Life is Lower in Former Division I Collegiate Athletes Than in Non-Collegiate Athletes

Background: College athletes participate in physical activity that may increase chronic stress and injury and induce overtraining. However, there is little known about how previous injuries that have occurred during college may limit current physical activity and/or decrease their subsequent…

Read OnCurrent Health-Related Quality of Life is Lower in Former Division I Collegiate Athletes Than in Non-Collegiate Athletes

Cultural vs Economic Capital: Symbolic Boundaries Within the Middle Class

This article concerns an insufficiently studied link in cultural class analysis, namely that between class-structured lifestyle differences and social closure. It employs a modified version of Michèle Lamont’s promising, yet under-theorised approach to the study of symbolic boundaries – the…

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Cultural Differences, Assimilation, and Behavior: Player Nationality and Penalties in Football

We examine the impact of a different cultural background on individual behavior, focusing on penalties in football matches of southern European and northern European football players in the English Premier League. Southern European football players collect on average more football…

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Cultural Consumption Through the Epistemologies of the South: ‘Humanization’ in Transnational Football Fan Solidarities

In 2014, Boaventura de Sousa Santos awoke the global sociological community to the need to privilege ‘humanization’ in the exploration of transnational solidarities. This article presents the cultural consumption of a football club – Liverpool FC – to understand the…

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Cuddling and Spooning: Heteromasculinity and Homosocial Tactility Among Student-Athletes

This article examines the prevalence of homosocial tactility and the contemporary status and meaning of heteromasculinity among British male youth. Drawing on in-depth interviews with forty student-athletes at a British university, we find that thirty-seven participants have cuddled with another…

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Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Religion as “Character”: Football and Soccer in the United States and Germany

This study compares sports media coverage of American football (“football”) in the United States and association football (“soccer”) in Germany, with a specific focus on the portrayal of Christian athletes. Specifically, we contend that media coverage of Christian football players…

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Creating Our Own Lineup: Identities and Shared Cultural Norms of Surfing Women in a U.S. East Coast Community

Women’s participation in surfing has grown significantly in the past decade, yet few surfing studies include women’s perspectives. Using the communication theory of identity (CTI), I examine how surfing women in one community develop, enact, and negotiate their identities in…

Read OnCreating Our Own Lineup: Identities and Shared Cultural Norms of Surfing Women in a U.S. East Coast Community

Creating Opportunities for Social Change in Women’s Sport Through Academic and Industry Collaborations: An Interview with Kate Fagan

A number of scholars have articulated the real and perceived benefits of engaging in collaborations with practitioners and have urged researchers to establish industry partnerships. Much of the discussion, however, stems from a researcher-perceptive and focuses on developing theory and…

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Counting Young People is Not Youth Work’: The Tensions Between Values, Targets and Positive Activities in Neighbourhood-Based Work

The UK New Labour Government’s ideological preoccupations included tackling deprivation, addressing anti-social behaviour and persuading young people to engage in ‘positive activities’. In 2007, the report ‘Aiming High for Young People’ outlined policies intended to contribute to the achievement of…

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Correlates of Pride in the Performance Success of United States Athletes Competing on an International Stage

Grounded in social-identity and self-categorization theories and drawing on data gathered in the US General Social Survey (N = 2528), this research examines how demographic and media-use measures associate with national pride, as experienced through the success of US athletes…

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Corporatization Activism Through Sport-Focused Social Justice? Investigating Nike’s Corporate Responsibility Initiatives in Sport for Development and Peace

Inspired by assertions of “creeping commercialization” in issues of social justice, this article seeks to address the entanglement of privatization with sport for development and peace initiatives. We look specifically at Nike’s history of “social responsibility” to situate the N7…

Read OnCorporatization Activism Through Sport-Focused Social Justice? Investigating Nike’s Corporate Responsibility Initiatives in Sport for Development and Peace

Contested Terrain and Terrain That Contests: Donald Trump Golf’s Environmental Politics and a Challenge to Anthropocentrism in Physical Cultural Studies

This article focuses on the case of Trump International Golf Links, Scotland (TIGLS), a golf course in Aberdeenshire that opened in 2012 after a lengthy and contentious application and development phase. Herein, we draw from a larger study of golf…

Read OnContested Terrain and Terrain That Contests: Donald Trump Golf’s Environmental Politics and a Challenge to Anthropocentrism in Physical Cultural Studies

Constructing Masculinity Through Penetration Discourse: The Intersection of Misogyny and Homophobia in High School Wrestling

Drawing from ethnographic data, this article analyzes how the ‘‘fag’’ identity and the epithet ‘‘pussy’’ relate to high school wrestlers’ constructions of masculinity. Empirically, this research illuminates two dynamics: (1) how wrestlers achieve normative masculinity by symbolically framing sexual relations…

Read OnConstructing Masculinity Through Penetration Discourse: The Intersection of Misogyny and Homophobia in High School Wrestling

Constructing and Contesting the Olympics Online: The Internet, Rio 2016 and the Politics of Brazilian Development

The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies.…

Read OnConstructing and Contesting the Olympics Online: The Internet, Rio 2016 and the Politics of Brazilian Development

Connecting Social Psychology and Sociology of Sport: Using Goffman as a Framework for Sociological Sports Research

Research on the sociology of sports has much to contribute to public discourse on sports and is well positioned to do so through the connection between sociology of sports and social psychology. This article uses the work of Erving Goffman…

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Conducting Commissioned Research in Neoliberal Academia: The Conditions Evaluations Impose on Research Practice

The article deals with the unease we experience during various commissioned research projects. On the one hand, as social scientists, we feel committed to conducting ‘good research’ that acknowledges quality criteria such as flexibility and transparency and in particular allows…

Read OnConducting Commissioned Research in Neoliberal Academia: The Conditions Evaluations Impose on Research Practice

Concussion Incidence and Return-To-Play Time in National Basketball Association Players. Results from 2006 to 2014

Background: Various research efforts have studied concussions in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League. However, no study has investigated the incidence and return-to-play trends in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which this study aims…

Read OnConcussion Incidence and Return-To-Play Time in National Basketball Association Players. Results from 2006 to 2014

Complicating the Relationship Between Sport and National Identity: The Case of Post-Socialist Slovenia

Sociology of sport knowledge on national identity is grounded in research that focuses primarily on long established nation-states with widely known histories. The relationship between sport and national identity in postsocialist/Soviet/colonial nations that have gained independence or sovereignty since 1990…

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Complex Interaction of Religiousness With Other Factors in Relation to Substance Use and Misuse Among Female Athletes

Strength of religious faith (SRF) is rarely studied as a protective factor against substance use and misuse in sports. Herein, we studied the potential buffering effect of the complex socio-educational, sports, and religiousness factors in the protection against substance use…

Read OnComplex Interaction of Religiousness With Other Factors in Relation to Substance Use and Misuse Among Female Athletes

Competing With Her Mother-in-Law: The Intersection of Control Management and Emotion Management in Sport Families

Extensive ethnographic research with wives of professional athletes revealed that in certain sport families, the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is among the numerous unique marital and occupational stressors these wives confront in their everyday life. Many wives believe they must compete with…

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Competing Loyalties in Sports Medicine: Threats to Medical Professionalism in Elite, Commercial Sport

This paper explores the ways in which the environment of elite-level and, in particular, commercial sport produces expectations and pressures on sports doctors that may compromise their professional standards. Specifically, this paper addresses the pressures and demands that emerge from…

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Competing Constructions of British National Identity: British Newspaper Comment on the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony

This study used newspaper comment on the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London as an avenue to discuss and contemplate British national identity. Through analysis of 91 editorials and opinion columns in the British national press, we…

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Comparison of Concussion Rates Between NCAA Division I and Division III Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey Players

Background: Examinations related to divisional differences in the incidence of sports-related concussions (SRC) in collegiate ice hockey are limited. Purpose: To compare the epidemiologic patterns of concussion in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ice hockey by sex and division. Study…

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Communism, Capitalism, and Images of Class. Effects of Reference Groups, Reality, and Regime in 43 Nations and 110,000 Individuals, 1987-2009

People differ vastly in perceptions of inequality, some seeing a small elite at the top of their society with a vast impoverished mass at the bottom, others a prosperous society with most people in the middle. This was found first…

Read OnCommunism, Capitalism, and Images of Class. Effects of Reference Groups, Reality, and Regime in 43 Nations and 110,000 Individuals, 1987-2009

Comment on Hanssen and Meehan, ‘‘Who Integrated Major League Baseball Faster Winning Teams or Losing Teams?’

In this short note, the authors contrast their own recent work on racial integration in Major League Baseball with that of two other groups: Hanssen and Meehan (2009) and Goff, McCormick, and Tollison (2002). While reaching dissimilar conclusions, both groups…

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Comment on “Investigating Allegations of Point-Shaving in NCAA Basketball Using Actual Sportsbook Betting Percentages”

A recent article by Paul and Weinbach has two objectives. The first is to reject the conventional wisdom that sports books operate by balancing the action on the games. The second objective of Paul and Weinbach is to investigate point-shaving.…

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Commemorating 9/11 NFL-Style: Insights Into America’s Culture of Militarism

This article explores how the National Football League’s (NFL’s) commemoration ceremonies on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 present a unique instance of sports–media-military convergence through their meticulous implementation across multiple games, broadcasting channels, and geographic locations. Expanding on themes of…

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Churches as Targets for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: Comparison of Genes, Nutrition, Exercise, Wellness and Spiritual Growth (GoodNEWS) and Dallas County Populations

Background We compared cardiovascular (CV) risk factors (CVRFs) of community-based participatory research (CBPR) participants with the community population to better understand how CBPR participants relate to the population as a whole. Methods Good News Participants in 20 African-American churches in…

Read OnChurches as Targets for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: Comparison of Genes, Nutrition, Exercise, Wellness and Spiritual Growth (GoodNEWS) and Dallas County Populations

Children’s Participation in Organized Sport and Physical Activities and Active Free Play: Exploring the Impact of Time, Gender and Neighbourhood Household Income Using Longitudinal Data

This study examines the associations among socioeconomic status (SES), aging, gender and sport and physical activity participation from late childhood into adolescence. Drawing from previous research, we test three hypotheses regarding the impact of aging on SES and sport participation…

Read OnChildren’s Participation in Organized Sport and Physical Activities and Active Free Play: Exploring the Impact of Time, Gender and Neighbourhood Household Income Using Longitudinal Data

Children’s engagement in leisure time physical activity: Exploring family structure as a determinant

This paper draws on Bourdieu’s key concepts in an effort to understand particular social practices and the effect of family as a social environment and determinant for participation in leisure time physical activity. As an exploratory study, the aim was…

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Cheering on the Collegiate Model: Creating, Disseminating, and Imbedding the NCAA’s Redefinition of Amateurism

In January 2012, during his “State of the Association” address, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) President Mark Emmert urged members to fix the “collegiate model.” Imbedded in the speech’s framework, this relatively new term in the NCAA national office’s lexicon…

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Cheating is the Name of the Game – Conventional Cheating Arguments Fail to Articulate Moral Responses to Doping

One of the most common arguments in the discussion on doping is that it represents a form of cheating. In this paper it is argued that common doping-is-cheating arguments based on notions of rule-violation and unfair advantage are inadequate, since…

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Chasing Rx: A Spatial Ethnography of the Crossfit Gym

CrossFit is a group fitness program that incorporates a variety of weightlifting and gymnastic movements performed at high intensities. While scholars have examined CrossFit’s physiological and behavioral outcomes, few studies have examined the program’s psychological and sociological characteristics. Drawing from…

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Chasing Objectivity? Critical Reflections on History, Identity, and the Public Performance of Indian Mascots

Chasing Objectivity? Critical Reflections on History, Identity, and the Public Performance of Indian Mascots examines the role of the objectivity within the discipline of history via explorations of research into Native American sports mascots. I argue that Whiteness and other…

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Changing Work Routines and Labour Practices of Sports Journalists in the Digital Era: A Case Study of Postmedia

This article contributes to an emerging body of research that examines the transformation of sport, journalism and media practice in the digital era as part of what Raymond Williams has called the ‘long revolution’ of communications, culture and democracy. In…

Read OnChanging Work Routines and Labour Practices of Sports Journalists in the Digital Era: A Case Study of Postmedia

Champions of Respect: Inclusion of LGBTQ Student-Athletes and Staff in NCAA Programs

This resource was commissioned by the LGBTQ Subcommittee of the NCAA association-wide Committee on Women’s Athletics and the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee in 2012. The subcommittee’s charge is to provide leadership and advocacy, raising awareness of and providing resources…

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Challenging the Gender Binary? Male Basketball Practice Players’ Views of Female Athletes and Women’s Sports

Kane’s ‘sport as a continuum’ theory posits many women can outperform many men in a variety of athletic endeavors. However, because sports are typically sex-segregated, this athletic continuum is rarely seen but provides a potentially powerful mechanism of transformation relative…

Read OnChallenging the Gender Binary? Male Basketball Practice Players’ Views of Female Athletes and Women’s Sports

Challenge and Relief: A Foucauldian Disciplinary Analysis of Retirement From Professional Association Football in the United Kingdom

The aim of this study was to consider the retirement experiences of British male professional association footballers by utilising Foucault’s analysis of discipline discussed in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Specifically, we drew upon Foucault to consider…

Read OnChallenge and Relief: A Foucauldian Disciplinary Analysis of Retirement From Professional Association Football in the United Kingdom

Capital Matters: Social Sustaining Capital and the Development of Black Student-Athletes

How is social capital nurtured and made meaningful in the development of black student-athletes in historically white institutional (HWI) settings? Research explicitly exploring an understanding of nurturing social capital related to the development of black student-athletes is scarce. This collective…

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Can ‘The Ghetto’ Really Take Over the County? ‘Race’, Generation & Social Change in Local Football in the UK

The involvement of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in local sports clubs is little used as a route for examining questions of their wider identity politics and exploring the impact of generational change in local sport. This is…

Read OnCan ‘The Ghetto’ Really Take Over the County? ‘Race’, Generation & Social Change in Local Football in the UK

Calling for a Time-Out: The Theology of Disability Sport and the Broader Understanding of Competition

The author seeks to interrogate technological trends in economic competition by means of theological reflection on the practices of disability sport, particularly the Special Olympics. He discusses the increasing influence of an algorithmic rationale that has been established in mainstream…

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Call Me Loyal: Globalization, Corporate Nationalism and the America’s Cup

This study examines the relationship between sport, globalization and national identity. Specifically, the article focuses on how Team New Zealand’s 2003 America’s Cup campaign represents and reproduces the concept of corporate nationalism. Located within a critical cultural studies perspective the…

Read OnCall Me Loyal: Globalization, Corporate Nationalism and the America’s Cup