Participation in Interscholastic Athletics and College Expectations

Data from 785 male seniors from six urban Pennsylvania high schools are used to evaluate the relationship between post-high-school educational expectations and participation or non-participation in interscholastic athletic activities. A zero-order y of .28 indicates that expectations and participation are positively associated. The possibility that this association is spurious is tested by statistically controlling three potentially confounding variables: Social status, academic performance, and parental educational encouragement. A third-order net partial association of .24 suggests that the association is not spurious, that the positive relationship between expectations and participation is a result of the socialization experiences of athletics rather than of differential selection into high school sports. Further analyses indicate, however, that the positive association between expectations and participation is not constant over relevant categories of the control variables but that the relationship is an interactive one; Specifically, that the positive association between expectations and participation is strongest for those categories of respondents least positively disposed toward a college education and weakest for those categories of respondents most disposed toward a college education.