Assessing the Social-Emotional Pathways between Organized Sports and Young Adult Outcomes

Ryan D. Heath (SPM) PI
2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant Award
2018-2019 Sport and Human Development Institute Seed Grant Award.

This study investigates the social-emotional mechanisms through which organized sports participation is associated with long-term educational and health outcomes.

Large numbers of young people engage in sports through organized activities outside of school hours. Organized sports – which include athletic activities that are supervised and/or facilitated by adults in the contexts of sports teams, athletic lessons, or community athletics centers – offer young people important opportunities to develop social-emotional skills and prosocial beliefs that foster healthy development. Indeed, research suggests that organized sports participation in adolescence is associated with stronger social-emotional adjustment and well-being. In the long-term, organized sports are associated with higher educational attainment in young adulthood, but also have mixed associations with substance use and health behaviors in adolescence and young adulthood. Given such long-term outcomes, there is a need to better understand what mechanisms may explain these associations. Social-emotional factors may constitute an important set of mechanisms. However, few studies test whether the association of organized sports participation with long-term educational and health outcomes can be explained by social-emotional factors.

To do so, this study will utilize data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Young Adulthood to test the association of organized sports participation in adolescence with educational attainment and health behaviors in young adulthood, and whether these relationships are mediated by five social-emotional factors:

  • self-esteem,
  • mental health,
  • educational expectations,
  • school belonging, and
  • interpersonal and problem-solving skills.