University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: July 1, 2004

By KATHLEEN WEAVER
Reporter Contributor

The relationships between participation in high school and college athletics, gender, substance use and other health-risk behaviors in college-age young adults will be the focus of a study conducted under a $471,000 grant awarded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to researchers at UB's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA).

"Our goal in this study is to sort out how different aspects of athletic involvement are related to risk-taking," said Kathleen E. Miller, RIA research scientist. "Ultimately, our findings will help to develop strategies for effectively incorporating school sports programs as tools for sex-, drug- or suicide-related risk prevention and public health promotion."

Miller's co-investigator on the award is Grace M. Barnes, RIA senior research scientist and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. The study will extend previous research by a collaborative working group comprised of Miller; Barnes; Michael P. Farrell, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology; Merrill J. Melnick, professor of physical education and sport at Brockport State College, and Donald F. Sabo, professor of sociology at D'Youville College.

"The relationships between athletic involvement and adolescent health risk are complex and not well understood," Miller noted. "For example, previously we found that high school girls who participate in organized sports take significantly fewer sexual risks than those who don't participate in sports, but male athletes may actually be at greater risk than male non-athletes. For other kinds of risky behavior, it appears that what matters most is not actual participation but identity-teenagers who identify with the 'jock' label are especially susceptible to problem drinking."

Other studies have been unable to separate these complex relationships because they simply compared athletes and nonathletes. In contrast, Miller said this study will explore four distinct dimensions of athletic involvement: characteristics of participation (e.g., which sports are played, at what competitive level, etc.), extent of participation (e.g., how many years of participation, average number of hours/week of participation, etc.), sport-related identity (e.g., "my body is my temple" athlete or "life of the party" jock) and sport-related norms (e.g., how much social status is associated with a given sport in a given context, formal and informal training rules regarding drug use, etc.).

Using college-athlete focus groups and surveys of Brockport and D'Youville students, the study will develop comprehensive measures of both objective athletic participation (what people do) and subjective sport-related identity (how people perceive themselves or are perceived by others).

Subsequently, a final round of questionnaires will be administered to UB undergraduate student-athletes and non-athletes in order to investigate how high school and college athletic involvement is linked to young-adult substance use (tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs), sexual risk-taking and suicidal behavior.