NCJ Number
200165
Journal
Journal of Drug Issues Volume: 33 Issue: 1 Dated: Winter 2003 Pages: 193-222
Date Published
2003
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This study tested the widely held belief that sports participation reduces subsequent risk for substance use, using longitudinal data of a representative sample of youth in their preteen and young adult years.
Abstract
The data used in the study were collected in an ongoing South Florida study of risk and protective factors associated with young adult substance use and mental health problems. Overall, 76.4 percent of those who were recruited for the study were successfully interviewed; the sample included 911 males and 319 females. The data, including measure of high school sports participation, were collected from interviews in 1998-2000, when the respondents were between the ages of 18 and 23. These data were supplemented with data collected when the respondents were in either the eighth or ninth grade. The young adults interviewed in 1998-2000 were compared with the original (1990-93) representative sample on a wide array of early adolescent behavior and family characteristics of possible relevance to mental health or substance abuse risk. The study found that, contrary to the deterrence hypothesis, playing high school sports did not apparently act as a protective factor to lower a person's involvement in alcohol or drug use as a young adult; however, subgroup analyses found that among African-Americans, the greater the extent of high school sports participation the less the risk of substance use. For Whites, on the other hand, playing high school sports was found to be positively associated with alcohol use, even in the context of other major predictors of alcohol use. Further analyses found that the positive association between sports participation and alcohol use apparently held only for White males. Implications of these findings are discussed. 7 tables, 6 notes, 64 references, and appended measures of stressors