The current study examined the association between playing high school football and involvement in violent behaviors in sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The analysis revealed that youth who played high school football self-reported more violence than those youth who did not play football.…

Little is known about how adolescents' peer relations might alter whether sport participation is associated with alcohol use. Consistent with social learning theory, we found that sport participation was protective against alcohol use if these peers had low alcohol use, but athletes were likely to use alcohol if their sport friends and teammates…

Compared sexual risk behavior of female athletes and nonathletes. Examined mediation, reverse mediation, spurious effects, and moderated causal models, using as potential mediators physical development, educational aspirations, self-esteem, attitudes toward pregnancy, involvement in a romantic relationship, age, ethnicity, and social class. Found…

This article examines the extent to which participation in high school interscholastic sports contributes to male violence. Deriving competing hypotheses from social control, social learning, and masculinity theories, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to test if (1) type of sport and (2) peer athletic…

Data from a national longitudinal survey of secondary school students showed that participation in a school sport was associated with self-esteem among Mexican American boys and girls, Puerto Rican girls, and Cuban American boys. School attachment and physical well-being mediated the relationship between sports participation and self-esteem.…