1) Minimum 3 full pages Cover or reference page not included 2)¨**********MLA norms All paragraphs must be narrative and cited in the text- each paragraphs Bulleted responses are not accepted No writ

KeywordsSports.

Enjoyment.

Self-esteem Sports and sporting activities play a prominent role in many persons’lives. Millions of spectators passionately track the fortunes of their favorite teams and athletes, and a sizable number of sports enthusiasts participate in one or moreathletic activities, either as formal participants in athletic competitions or for recreational purposes. What benefits do people derive from sporting activities, and to what extent does their own participation influence their sense of self ?

Reasons for participating in sports are many and varied, including, but not limited to, enjoyment of the activity, peer and parental influence, presumed health benefits of partic- ipation, and an increase in physical conditioning/well-being (e.g., Battista,1990; Brustad,1988; Cote,1999; Holland & Andre,1994; Scanlan & Lewthwaite,1986; Snyder & Spreitzer,1979). Among the most common presumed psychosocial benefits of sports participation is an enhanced sense of self-worth. Research on male samples is generally consistent with the latter assertion, which suggests that sports participation may have both short-term and long- term effects on persons’self-esteem (e.g., Pascarella & Smart,1991; Spretizer,1994; Taylor,1995; Vilhjamsson & Thorlindsson,1992).

Our focus in the present research centers on a presumed motivation for participating in sports and psychosocial benefits of such sports participation in young women. Several researchers have noted that sports and athletic activities are still generally considered to be a masculine domain (e.g., Koivula,1999; Shaw, Kleiber, & Caldwell,1995) and that girls may have difficulty reconciling the physical and competitive nature of sports with their emerging feminine self-concepts (Eccles, Barber, Jozefowicz, Malenchuk, & Vida,1999). Yet, girls’and women’s participation in athletics has increased dramatically in the past 30 years (Schultz & Fish,1998), owing, in part, to the passage and enforcement of Title IX (Grant,1995), a federal law passed in 1972 that bans discrimination on the basis of gender in federally funded institutions. Moreover, encouragement of girls to participate in sports is apparent in such popular cultural appeals as the late 1990s advertising campaign by Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232 DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9074-3 This article is based on a Master’s thesis conducted by the second author under the direction of the first author.

D. R. Shaffer (*) :E. Wittes Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA e-mail: [email protected] Nike that featured young girls pleading“If you let me play sports”and then citing various health and psychosocial benefits that purportedly result from sport participation, including an enhanced sense of self-esteem.

Sports Participation and Girls’Self-esteem Previous research on the relationship between girls’sports participation and self-esteem is limited and somewhat inconsistent. Several researchers have reported bivariate relationships that indicate that girls (and boys in mixed- gender samples) who participate in sports have higher self- esteem than those who do not (Butcher,1989; Centre for Research on Girls and Women in Sport,1997; Koivula, 1999; Rao & Overman,1986;Taylor,1995). Other researchers have reported that whether sports participation is positively or negatively related to participants’self-esteem is moderated by participants’gender role orientations and the nature of the sporting activity; for example, individuals with a feminine gender role orientation are most likely to derive a sense of self-worth from participating in noncompetitive than in competitive sports (Bowker, Gadbois & Cornock,2003).

Yet, it is worth noting that sports participation has been, at best, a modest predictor of global self-esteem for partic- ipants of either sex (e.g., Jackson & Marsh,1986; Richman & Shaffer,2000; Spreitzer,1994).

Jackson and Marsh (1986) suggested that sports partic- ipation influences self-esteem indirectly by enhancing such sports-related contributors to self-worth as perceived physical competence and a favorable body image. Recent research with a female sample supported this viewpoint (Richman & Shaffer,2000). Specifically, a positive bivariate relationship between girls’participation in sports in high school and their self-esteem during the college years was mediated by the favorable impact of sport participation on participants’perceived physical competence, body image, and masculinity and that in the absence of such “benefits,”sport participation was associated with lower levels of self-esteem (see also Marsh,1998, for similar results among sample of elite athletes). Thus, one reason that relationships between sports participation and self- esteem are often modest is that sports affect girls in different ways and seem to enhance self-worth only to the extent that they promote other contributors to self-esteem.Sport Enjoyment and Self-esteem Although sports participants of both sexes cite health benefits and social stimulation as reasons for participating in sports, the most frequently cited motive participants give is affective or evaluative in character: Sports are“fun,” “exciting,”or“activities that I enjoy”(e.g., Battista,1990; Scanlan & Lewthwaite,1986; Snyder & Spreitzer,1979).

This finding suggests an interesting motivational model of girls’sports participation that, to our knowledge, has not been evaluated. Perhaps the positive relationship between girls’sport participation and self-esteem is mediated (or moderated) by the extent to which girls report that they enjoy sporting activities. Far fewer girls than boys regularly participate in sports (Centre for Research on Girls and Women,1997; Eccles & Barber,1999), and their partici- pation often stems from formal and informal inducements to participate from gym teachers, parents, siblings, or peers.

We propose that girls who discover that they enjoy sporting activities during childhood or adolescence may experience gains in self-esteem from their participation, whereas those who derive little enjoyment from sports participation may benefit little from, or even suffer psychosocially from, continued involvement in activities they dislike or perhaps think of as stereotypically masculine endeavors. Indeed, Bem and Lenney (1976) found that partaking in behaviors perceived to be more appropriate for members of the other sex is often discomforting and produces negative feelings about the self. Thus, one goal of the present research was to evaluate the simple but straightforward mediating/moder- ating model depicted in Fig.1—a model that specifies that sports participation fosters the self-esteem of young women who report that they enjoy sporting activities and that, at lower levels of enjoyment, partaking in sporting activities may actually undermine self-esteem.

Of course, empirical support for the above hypotheses raises the issue of why girls might come to enjoy (or to derive little enjoyment from) sporting activities in the first place. We hypothesized that girls who come to enjoy sports the most are those who can point to clear benefits that they receive from their participation. Such benefits may be many and varied, although it is likely that sports-related enhance- ments to such personal attributes as physical competence, a favorable body image, and socially desirable masculine characteristics such as assertiveness and a healthy sense of Fig. 1Path model of the pro- posed relationships among pre- college sports participation, enjoyment of sports, and self- esteem during the college years.

226Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232 competition, contribute heavily to girls’enjoyment of sports and to any enhanced sense of self-worth they may experience from their participation. A related corollary is that girls who fail to experience such benefits derive little if any enjoyment or enhanced self-worth from sporting activities. Our research was designed to test these hypoth- eses as well as a prediction that derives from them, namely that girls’enjoyment of sporting activities may account for little unique variance in self-esteem after controlling for the effects of sports participation on such contributors to self- worth as physical competence, a favorable body image, and a heightened sense of masculinity.

Materials and Methods Participants The sample consisted of 245 female introductory psychol- ogy students from a large southeastern university who participated as part of a course requirement. The mean age of participants was 19.9 years. The majority of sample was European American (91%), 6% defined themselves as African American, 1% as Asian American, and 1.6% as Native American, Biracial, Hispanic, or“other.” Antecedent Measures Sports participationPrecollege participation in sporting activities was measured by asking participants to make quantitative and qualitative assessments of their precollege sporting activities using indexes developed earlier by Richman and Shaffer (2000). The first measure, Sport Years, asked participants to indicate the total number of years during grade school, junior high school, and high school that they had voluntarily taken part in athletics of any kind as active participants. Participants could select from seven possible responses (0 = less than 1 year; 6 = more than 6 years). The second measure, Sports Involvement, asked participants to indicate how personally involved in sports they perceived themselves to have been prior to coming to college (1 = not at all involved; 5 = very involved). These two measures proved to be internally consistent (α= .75) and were combined to form a composite index of precollege sports participation with scores that could range between 1 and 11. The mean for this sample was 8.44 (SD = 2.49), which indicates moderate precollege sport participation overall.

Intervening Variables Enjoyment of sportsEnjoyment of sporting activities was assessed with an 8-item instrument designed for thisproject. Each item was a declarative statement pertinent to participants’affective/evaluative experiences in sporting activities (e.g.,“I enjoy sporting activities”;“I get excited when thinking about my sporting activities”;“I often wish I had chosen to participate less in sports”[reverse scored]) that was answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = not at all true of me; 5 = very true of me). Internal consistency of these items was quite acceptable in the present sample, with α= 0.83. Thus, participants’responses to the eight items were summed to yield composite measures of sports enjoyment. The mean score on the composite, which could range from 8 to 40, was 33.94 (SD = 5.10), which indicates that the average participant in our sample derived a moderate level of enjoyment from sports participation. 1 Physical competenceThe 62-item Physical Self-Descrip- tion Questionnaire (PDSQ) (Marsh, Richards, Johnson, Roche, & Tremayne,1994), designed for adolescents and adults, was used to assess several dimensions of physical competence. Each item consisted of a declarative statement that was rated by participants on a 6-point Likert-type scale (e.g.,“I am good at coordinated movements”;“I feel good about who I am physically”); higher scores indicate more of each attribute. The internal consistency of these items in our sample was quite high,α= 0.95. Thus, we summed participants’responses across the 62 items to form a composite index of perceived physical competence. The mean score on this composite, which could range from 70 to 372, was 265.0 (SD = 48.63), which indicates that participants had moderately positive perceptions of their physical competence.

Body imageBody image was measured using the Body Esteem Scale (Franzoi & Shields,1984), a 35-item self- report instrument that assesses participants’feelings about their bodies with respect to weight control, sexual attrac- tiveness, and physical condition. Each item was rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale to describe strongly negative (1) to strongly positive (5) feelings. The internal consistency of our participants’responses to the 35 items on the scale was quite acceptable, withα= 0.91. Thus, we summed partic- ipants’responses to form a composite Body Image index.

The mean score on this composite, which could range from 35 to 175, was 124.29 (SD = 19.64), which indicates that our sample had moderately favorable body images.

Gender roleThe Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence & Helmreich,1978) was used to assess partic- ipants’gender role orientations. The PAQ is a 24-item 1Copies of the Sports Enjoyment Scale are available, upon request, from the first author. Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232227 instrument that produces indexes of masculinity (instru- mentality), femininity (expressiveness), and androgyny.

The PAQ asks respondents to indicate on a 5-point scale ( 2 = not at all; +2 = very) the extent to which each of 12 traditionally masculine attributes (e.g., competitive) and 12 traditionally feminine attributes (e.g., emotional) are self- descriptive. Respondents who score above the sample median on both the masculinity and femininity subscales are classified as“androgynous,”whereas those who score below the median on both subscales are classified as “undifferentiated.”A desire to maximize power prompted us to treat participants’scores on the masculinity and the femininity subscales as continuous variables rather than to classify participants into discrete gender role subgroups.

Participants’responses to the masculinity and femininity subscales were internally consistent (α= 0.76 andα= 0.75, respectively). The mean masculinity score in the present sample was 21.38 (SD = 4.13), whereas the mean femininity score was 25.04 (SD = 3.91).

Outcome Variable Self-esteemParticipants’global self-esteem was assessed by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg,1965), a 10-item instrument that consists of five positively worded items (e.g.,“On the whole, I am satisfied with myself”) and five negatively worded items (e.g.,“I feel as if I do not have much to be proud of”). Each item was rated on a 5- point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree), and responses were summed, after reverse-coding the negatively worded items, to yield a composite self- esteem score that could range between 10 and 50.

Participants’responses to this instrument were internally consistent(α= 0.87). The mean self-esteem score was 38.38 (SD = 6.90), which indicates that, on average, members of this sample had moderately positive self-evaluations.Results Preliminary Analyses Although the sample was overwhelmingly European Amer- ican, we first evaluated the possibility that a demographic variable, participant ethnicity, might be associated with the primary variables of interest in this study. When participant ethnicity was added to regression analyses that included all other variables of interest, it did not account for significant additional variance in either the proposed intervening variables or the consequent variable of self-esteem. On the basis of these results (and because no predictions were made regarding ethnicity effects), we did not include the participant ethnicity variable in subsequent analyses.

Bivariate Analyses Bivariate correlations among all the variables were calcu- lated to determine their degree of interrelatedness and to establish a foundation for further analyses. Intercorrelations among variables for the sample appear in Table1.As expected, greater precollege sports participation predicted a more favorable body image, greater perceived physical competence, more flexible gender role attributes (i.e., greater masculinity), greater enjoyment of sports, and (marginally) higher levels of self-esteem. In addition, the proposed intervening variables were reliably associated with the consequent variable, global self-esteem. That is, women with more favorable body images, greater perceived physical competence, a stronger sense of masculinity, and who derived greater enjoyment of sporting activities reported higher levels of global self-esteem. It is interesting that femininity (or feminine expressivity) was not associ- ated with the proposed antecedent variable (sports partic- ipation), although it was modestly correlated with the consequent variable (global self-esteem).

Table 1Intercorrelations among the antecedent, intervening, and consequent variables.

Variable 1234567 Antecedent 1. Precollege sport participation–0.65*** 0.44*** 0.20*** 0.24*** 0.02 0.12* Intervening 2. Enjoyment of sports–0.56*** 0.33*** 0.32*** 0.06 0.26*** 3. Physical competence–0.64*** 0.53*** 0.00 0.32*** 4. Body image–0.37*** 0.10 0.47*** 5. Masculinity– 0.10 0.50*** 6. Femininity–0.15** Consequent 7. Self-esteem– *p= 0.06 **p< 0.05 ***p< 0.01 228Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232 In sum, precollege sports participation was correlated with all of the proposed intervening variables and with self- esteem during the college years (albeit modestly), and all of the proposed intervening variables were reliable predictors of self-esteem.

Testing the Enjoyment Model Standard path analysis (Darlington,1990) was used to evaluate the plausibility of a mediational model that specifies that precollege sports participation would posi- tively influence the self-esteem of young women to the extent that they enjoy such activities. First, the proposed intervening variable (enjoyment of sports) was regressed onto precollege sports participation. In the second step, self-esteem was the outcome variable, and enjoyment of sports was treated as a predictor. Significant pathways that emerged from these analyses appear in Fig.2.

The path model accounted for a significant portion of the variance in women’s self-esteem, TotalR 2=0.36,p< 0.0001. As can be seen, sport participation predicted enjoyment of sports, which in turn, was a significant predictor of global self-esteem.

Recall from the bivariate correlations that precollege sports participation was positively correlated (r= 0.12) with self-esteem. Note, however, that this relationship was reversed from positive to significantly negative when the proposed intervening variable of enjoyment of sport was included in the path model. It thus appears that participants’ sport enjoyment totally mediated the relationship between sports participation and self-esteem: Earlier sport participa- tion appears to foster self-worth to the extent that girls enjoy their sporting activities, but may actually undermine the self-esteem of girls and women who find sporting activities less enjoyable.

Although the path model is consistent with a mediational model of the relationships among sports participation, enjoyment of sport, and self-esteem, additional analyses were performed to determine if enjoyment of sport might have moderated the sports participation–self-esteem rela-tionship. No support was found for moderating effects. That is, a regression analyses that included the interaction term between sports participation and enjoyment of sports, with self-esteem as the criterion, revealed no interaction effect after we controlled for the variance in self-esteem attribut- able to the main effects in the model.

Does Enjoyment of Sports Stem from Beneficial Correlates of Sport Participation?

Although enjoyment of sporting activities appears to mediate the relationship between sports participation and subsequent self-esteem, we hypothesized that enjoyment of sports results from tangible benefits associated with sports participation and may account for little unique variance in participants’self-esteem after controlling for such benefits.

As expected, the bivariate analyses in Table1revealed that such sports-related benefits as physical competence, a favorable body image, and masculinity were reliably associated with sports participation and with participants’ enjoyment of sports. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to test our hypotheses. The outcome variable was self-esteem, whereas the predictors, entered in five steps in the order listed here, were sports participation, physical competence, body image, masculin- ity, and sports enjoyment.

A summary of this analysis appears in Table2. As the table indicates, precollege sports participation was a marginally significant predictor of participants’self-esteem during the college years. Moreover, entry of each of the proposed“benefits”of sport participation at Steps 2–4 (i.e., physical competence, body image, and masculinity) resulted in significant changes inR 2, which indicates that each of these variables made a unique contribution to participants’self-esteem, TotalR 2= 0.42. Finally, sports enjoyment, entered at Step 5, failed to increaseR 2, which indicates that this variable does not contribute uniquely to women’s self-esteem after controlling for the main effects of sports participation and“benefits”that appear to result from sporting activities. Notice, also, that the relationship Fig. 2Path model of the relationships among precollege sports participation, enjoyment of sports, and self-esteem during the college years.

Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232229 between sport participation and self-esteem changed from marginally positive to significantly negative after the presumed impacts of sports participation on physical competence, body image, and masculinity were entered into the model. This finding implies that girls may not benefit (and could suffer) psychosocially unless their participation in sporting activities results in such benefits as enhancements in their physical competence, body image, or sense of masculine instrumentality.

Discussion Previous research on the psychosocial impact for girls of participating in sporting activities is limited and somewhat inconsistent. Although several investigators have argued that sports participation can have a salutary effect on girls’ self-esteem, the resulting sports–self-esteem relationships are typically modest and subject to qualification (see for example, Bowker et al.,2003; Richman & Shaffer,2000).

One potential shortcoming of previous research is that it typically fails to consider the“quality”of girls’sports experience, that is, how much girls enjoy the sporting activities they undertake. Given that enjoyment is the most frequently cited reason that participants list for partaking in sports, we chose to evaluate a mediating/moderating model that specifies that girls who enjoy sports would benefit psychosocially from their participation and that, at lower levels of enjoyment, continued sports participation may have a negative impact on self-esteem. Our data were consistent with these premises. Not only did sports participation predict sports enjoyment which, in turn, predicted girls’self-esteem, but the marginally significant positive relationship between sports participation and self- esteem became significantly negative after we controlledfor the influence of sports enjoyment. Thus, consistent with our model, these outcomes indicate that (1) earlier sports participation fosters self-esteem to the extent that girls enjoy their sporting activities, but (2) could actually undermine the self-worth of girls who find sporting activities less enjoyable.

Our next concern was to explore some potentially important reasons why girls differ in their enjoyment of sports and to determine whether sports enjoyment might make a unique contribution to girls’self-esteem after controlling for the effects of those factors that might contribute to their enjoyment of sporting activities. There are, of course, a multitude of reasons why girls might enjoy sports. In this project, we focused on three sports-related “benefits”that had, in previous research (cf. Richman & Shaffer,2000), totally mediated the positive relationship between girls’earlier sports participation and later self- esteem: perceived physical competence, favorability of body image, and masculinity. As expected, each of these proposed contributors to sports enjoyment predicted pre- college sports enjoyment and self-esteem during the college years in bivariate analyses. Moreover, each made unique contributions to self-esteem after we controlled for the main effect of precollege sports participation. Finally, our analyses revealed that the sports enjoyment variable did not account for any variance in participants’self-esteem after we controlled for precollege sports participation and such presumed sports-related benefits as increased physical competence, a more favorable body image, and an enhanced sense of masculinity. This finding was anticipated and simply reflects, we believe, that (1) girls enjoy sports to the extent that they perceive themselves as benefiting in some way from sporting activities, and (2) the perceived benefits, rather then enjoyment per se, explains any positive effect of earlier sports participation on the self-esteem of college women.

Table 2Summary of hierarchical regression analysis of sports-related predictors of women’s self-esteem.

R 2change Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 1 Sports Participation 0.025* 0.12* 0.12* 0.09 0.13** 16** Step 2 Physical Competence 0.22**–0.53** 0.35** 0.18** 0.18** Step 3 Body Image 0.09**––0.35** 0.35** 0.35** Step 4 Masculinity 0.08**–– –0.25** 0.25** Step 5 Sport Enjoyment– ––––0.08 TotalR 2= 0.42** *p< 0.06 **p< 0.01 230Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232 Limitations of the Present Research Clearly, this is a correlational study that relies on retrospective reports of prior sports participation and does not conclusively establish that involvement in sporting activities is causally related to either changes in self-esteem or to the variables presumed to mediate the relationship between sports participation and self-esteem. Accuracy of retrospective reports can always be questioned. Although in this project we did not measure how involved our participants were as collegians in sporting activities, we can point to data from prior samples drawn from the same population as our participants that indicate that retrospec- tive reports ofprecollegesports participation reliably predict college self-esteem and current perceptions of physical competence, body image, and masculinity, where- as measures of participants’collegesports participation do not (Richman,2001; Richman & Shaffer,2000). This provides some evidence that our measure of precollege sports participation was not merely a stand-in for current sports participation. And, unlike college students’reports of global self-esteem, earlier participants’retrospective reports of high school self-esteem werenotsignificantly correlated in previous research with their reports of body image, physical competence, or masculinity during the college years (Richman & Shaffer,2000). Although not definitive, such observations increase our confidence that earlier sports participation could well have meaningful effects on the model’s intervening variables and on self-esteem that were not qualified by participants’current levels of sports participation or their prior levels of global self-esteem.

Nevertheless, results from this and earlier studies would certainly be bolstered by a prospective study that provided corroborating longitudinal data. Ideally, researchers would collect data from participants in at least three waves: (1) before they begin athletic participation, to establish a baseline for self-esteem; (2) during their periods of participation, to assess any immediate impacts of sporting activities on the model’s intervening and criterion variables; and (3) after athletic participation winds down or ends to assess the longevity of the effects. This design would yield the kinds of longitudinal data that come closer to illuminating any causal links among sports participation, the proposed intervening variables, and self-esteem.

We also wish to caution against treating the experiences of our highly educated and predominantly White samples as the“norm”and failing to consider that any psychosocial impact of sports participation may reliably differ for young women from other educational and racial/ethnic back- grounds. Indeed, racial/ethnic variations in women’s body image and endorsement of gender-typed traits (Harris,1994; Myers,1989) are reasons to suspect that any effect of sport participation on self-esteem could vary across populationsand that our findings may not be at all“normative”for Women of Color. 2Thus, future researchers might strive to oversample participants from minority groups and to treat the diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds of study participants as integral to model building rather than simply assuming that a middle-class cultural context represents the norm for all young women.

Conclusions and Implications Despite its limitations, the present research clearly extends existing knowledge by (1) proposing how the quality of girls’sporting experiences (as indexed by sports enjoyment) and specific correlates of these evaluative judgments might influence the relationship between sports participation and self-esteem and (2) generating some plausible support for this model. Our findings also provide some clues about why the apparent psychosocial impacts of sports participation are modest in scope. Simply stated, sporting activities affect different girls in different ways. Sports participation appears to foster the self-esteem of girls who enjoy sporting activities because they perceive themselves as benefiting in some ways by their participation. But in the absence of these positive outcomes, participating in sporting activities may have little psychosocial impact or could actually undermine self-worth. How? For some participants, social comparisons undertaken during sporting activities may highlight just how physically uncoordinated or incapable they are—an inference that may undermine their enjoyment of sports and their sense of global self-worth. Other girls, who may be facing increased pressures to conform to gender-stereotyped behaviors—pressures that are common among adolescent girls (cf. Hill & Lynch,1983; Ruble & Martin,1998)—may derive little psychosocial benefit from sporting activities if they are concerned about the non- traditionality of their behavior as participants in a masculine activity or about others’potentially negative reactions to it (Koivula,1999; Richman,2001).

The finding that sports participation might actually undermine the self-worth of some girls has implications for physical educators, parents, or anybody else who might encourage girls to partake in sporting activities. The goal, we believe, should be to find ways of illustrating to participants thebenefitsthey might incur from sports- enhanced physical capabilities, weight control, learning to be more appropriately assertive, or even that their efforts, no matter how minor, might contribute in important ways to team objectives and shared goals. Accordingly, gym classes 2Although race/ethnicity did not explain additional variance for any measure in our model, the fact remains that our small number of participants of Color may not have been sufficient to detect meaningful racial/ethnic differences in the sport participation/self- esteem relationship. Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232231 and formal team sports might prove beneficial to larger numbers of girls if educators, coaches, and parents were to emphasize and to devise ways to measure and illustrate the physical and psychological gains derived from formal and informal sporting activities, and to concentrate less on the outcomes of competitive sports or the physical deficiencies of the less athletic girls under their tutelage. In short, we believe that there are steps that adults can take to highlight how girls can profit from participating in sports so that more of them will enjoy such activities, remain physically active, and reap both physical and psychosocial benefits from their participation.

References Battista, R. R. (1990). Personal meaning: Attraction to sports participation.Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70, 1003–1009.

Bem, S. L., & Lenney, E. (1976). Sex-typing and the avoidance of cross- sex behavior.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 48–54.

Bowker, A., Gadbois, S., & Cornock, B. (2003). Sports participation and self-esteem: Variations as a function of gender and gender role orientation.Sex Roles, 49,47–58.

Brustad, R. J. (1988). Affective outcomes in competitive youth sport:

The influence of intrapersonal and socialization factors.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10, 307–321.

Butcher, J. E. (1989). Adolescent girls’sex role development:

Relationship with sports participation, self-esteem, and age at menarche.Sex Roles, 20, 575–593.

Centre for Research on Girls and Women in Sport (1997).Physical activity and sport in the lives of young girls: Physical and mental health dimensions from an interdisciplinary perspective.The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport Report.

Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota.

Cote, J. (1999). The influence of family in the development of talent in sport.The Sport Psychologist, 13, 395–417.

Darlington, R. B. (1990).Regression and linear models. New York:

McGraw-Hill.

Eccles, J. S., & Barber, B. L. (1999). Student council, volunteering, basketball, or marching band: What kind of extracurricular involvement matters?Journal of Adolescent Research, 14,10– 44.

Eccles, J. S., Barber, B., Jozefowicz, D., Malenchuk, O., & Vida, M.

(1999). Self-evaluations of competence, task values, and self- esteem. In N. G. Johnson, M. C. Roberts & J. Worell (Eds.), Beyond appearance: A new look at adolescent girls(pp. 53–84).

Washington, District of Columbia: American Psychological Association.

Franzoi, S. L., & Shields, S. A. (1984). The body esteem scale:

Multidimensional structure and sex differences in a college population.Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 173–178.

Grant, C. H. (1995).Title IX and gender equity.Presentation at the NACWAA Fall Forum, Cedar Rapids, IA [On-line]. Available:

http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ge/present.

Harris, S. (1994). Racial differences in predictors of college women’s body image attitudes.Women & Health, 21,89–104.

Hill, J. P., & Lynch, M. E. (1983). The intensification of gender- related role expectations during early adolescence. In J. Brooks- Gunn & A. C. Peterson (Eds.),Girls at puberty: Biological and psychosocial perspectives(pp. 201–228). New York: Plenum.Holland, A., & Andre, T. (1994). Athletic participation and the social status of adolescent males and females.Youth & Society, 25(3), 388–407.

Jackson, S. A., & Marsh, H. W. (1986). Athletic or antisocial? The female sport experience.Journal of Sport Psychology, 8, 192– 211.

Koivula, N. (1999). Sport participation: Differences in motivation and actual participation due to gender typing.Journal of Sport Behavior, 22, 360–381.

Marsh, H. W. (1998). Age and gender effects in physical self-concepts for adolescent elite athletes and nonathletes: A multicohort– multioccasion design.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 20, 237–259.

Marsh, H. W., Richards, G. E., Johnson, S., Roche, L., & Tremayne, P. (1994). Physical self-description questionnaire: Psychometric properties and a multitrait–multimethod analysis of relations to existing instruments.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 16, 270–305.

Myers, L. (1989). Early gender role socialization among Black women: Affective or consequential?Western Journal of Black Studies, 13, 173–178.

Pascarella, E. T., & Smart, J. C. (1991). Impact of intercollegiate athletic participation for African-American and Caucasian men:

Some further evidence.Journal of College Student Development, 32, 123–130.

Rao, V. P., & Overman, S. J. (1986). Psychological well-being and body-image: A comparison of Black women athletes and nonathletes.Journal of Sport Behavior, 9,79–91.

Richman, E. L. (2001).Girls’self-construction: Influence on early sports participation on self-esteem in late adolescence. Doctoral dissertation, University of Georgia.

Richman, E. L., & Shaffer, D. R. (2000).“If you let me play sports”:

How might sport participation influence the self-esteem of adolescent females?Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24, 189– 199.

Rosenberg, M. (1965).Society and the adolescent self-image. Prince- ton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Ruble, D. N., & Martin, C. L. (1998). Gender development. In N.

Eisenberg (Ed.),Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3 Social, emotional, and personality development(5th ed., pp. 933–1016).

New York: Wiley.

Scanlan, T. K., & Lewthwaite, R. (1986). Social psychological aspects of competition for male youth sport participants IV: Predictors of enjoyment.Journal of Sport Psychology, 8,25–35.

Shaw, S. M., Kleiber, D. A., & Caldwell, L. L. (1995). Leisure and identity information in male and female adolescents: A prelim- inary examination.Journal of Leisure Research, 27, 245–263.

Schultz, J., & Fish, M. (1998). Women in sports: Historic gains, but also more pains. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, pp. A1, A17 (September 20).

Snyder, E. E., & Spreitzer, E. (1979). Orientations toward sport:

Intrinsic, normative, and extrinsic.Journal of Sport Psychology, 1, 170–175.

Spence, J. T., & Helmrich, R. (1978).Masculinity and femininity:

Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents.

Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Spreitzer, E. (1994). Does participation in interscholastic athletics affect adult development? A longitudinal analysis of an 18–24 age cohort.Youth & Society, 23, 368–387.

Taylor, D. L. (1995). A comparison of college athletic participants and nonparticipants on self-esteem.Journal of College Student Development, 36, 444–451.

Vilhjamsson, R., & Thorlindsson, T. (1992). The integrative and psychological effects of sport participation: A study of adoles- cents.Sociological Quarterly, 33, 637–647. 232Sex Roles (2006) 55:225–232