Sports in School: Source of Amity or Antipathy?

Objectives. Previous research looks at the impact of school sports on participants’ delinquency, but not at the impact on delinquency in schools; further, it does not control for school size or for unobserved school‐level variables. This research fills that gap. It uses social capital theory to frame the impact of sports programs on both participants and nonparticipants. Social capital theory predicts that group cohesion will increase cooperative, pro‐social behavior among those in the group; however, it can also increase uncooperative, antisocial behavior among those not in the group—particularly when in‐group membership is seen as desirable. Social capital theory also predicts that larger schools will have more disturbances, but subgroups in large schools will reduce these adverse effects. Methods. The hypotheses were tested by looking at the relation between disturbances and interscholastic sports programs in Montgomery County, Maryland high schools. Using three years of data on each high school in the county, the study regresses disturbances on sports participation, holding constant demographic variables, school size, and a dummy variable for each school. Results. Larger schools have more disturbances, but bigger interscholastic sports programs mitigate these effects. Conclusions. The policy implications suggest that to foster cooperative behavior in high schools, it might be wise to limit school size, or to foster participation in varsity sports as school size increases.