Moderate Involvement In Sports Is Related To Lower Depression Levels Among Adolescents

Adolescence, Winter, 2000 by Christopher E. Sanders, Tiffany M. Field, Miguel Diego, Michele Kaplan

ABSTRACT

Sports involvement has been found to be related to social and psychological well-being in Icelandic adolescents. The present study investigated whether similar relationships exist for American adolescents. A group of 89 high school seniors completed a questionnaire that gathered data on sports involvement, depression, intimacy with parents and friends, and grade point average. It was found that the moderate sports involvement group (3 to 6 hours per week) had lower depression scores than did the low sports involvement group (2 hours or less per week). The findings are discussed.

In a study on Icelandic youth, Vilhjalmsson and Thorlindsson (1998) examined the relationship of involvement in sports to a number of psychological, social, and demographic variables. They found that sports involvement was associated with gender, significant others' involvement in physical activity, and sociability. In another study, adolescent sports involvement was associated with less depressed mood, higher levels of achievement, and more social activities (Mechanic & Hansell, 1987).

The present study examined the relationship of different levels of sports involvement to similar social and psychological factors, including depression, among American adolescents. Based on previous findings, adolescents who had higher levels of sports involvement were expected to be less depressed, to have more intimate relationships with parents and friends, and to have a better grade point average.

METHOD

Participants

The participants were 89 suburban high school seniors (mean age = 17); 37 were male and 52 were female. They were recruited from a private high school. The ethnic distribution was as follows: 76% Caucasian, 11% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 3% African-American, and 5% other. The participants, on average, were of middle to upper middle socioeconomic status (M = 3.9 on the Hollingshead Two-Factor Index).

Measures

The participants were administered a questionnaire that gathered data on sports involvement, depression, intimate relationships with parents and friends, and grade point average (Field & Yando, 1991). The questionnaires were completed anonymously within a 45-minute time frame in one of the students' classes. Sports involvement was divided into three categories (low = 2 hours or less per week, moderate = 3 to 6 hours per week, and high = 7 or more hours per week). Depression was assessed using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). CES-D scores can range from 0 to 60, with a score greater than 16 indicating depression. The CESD has been standardized for high school populations (Radloff, 1991) and has adequate test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and concurrent validity (Schoenbach, Kaplan, Wagner, Grimson, & Miller, 1983; Wells, Klerman, & Deykin, 1987). Intimate relationships with parents and friends was measured via a 24-item questionnaire (Blyth & Foster-C lark, 1987) that has demonstrated good psychometric properties (e.g., test-retest reliability = .81). Questions include: "How much do you go to your mother for advice/support?" and "How much does your best friend accept you no matter what you do?" Responses are made on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "not at all" to "very much." Grade point average was assessed by having participants estimate their current overall grade point average on a 4-point scale.

RESULTS

Chi-square analyses indicated that there were no significant differences between the low, moderate, and high sports involvement groups in terms of gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status (SES), as shown in Table 1. Participants were evenly distributed across all three levels of sports involvement.

First, a MANOVA was performed on CES-D scores (depression), intimate relationships with parents and friends, and grade point average; F(6, 130) = 2.72, p [less than] .05. Follow-up univariate ANOVAs were then performed. There was a significant main effect of group for CES-D scores, F(2, 66) = 4.33, p [less than] .05. A post hoc Bonferroni test revealed that the low sports involvement group had a significantly higher mean depression score as compared with the moderate sports involvement group, t(50) 3.01, p [less than] .01 (see Table 2). No significant group effects were found for either intimate relationships with parents and friends or grade point average.

DISCUSSION

Surprisingly, the different sports involvement groups did not differ on intimate relationships with parents and peers or grade point average, in contrast with the findings of Mechanic and Hansell (1987). This may be due to the limited range of parent and peer intimacy scores and grade point averages in this relatively homogeneous sample. A moderate level of sports involvement (3 to 6 hours per week) was, however, associated with less depression as compared with a low level of sports involvement (2 hours or less per week), consistent with the Icelandic study (Vilhjalmsson & Thorlindsson, 1998) and the one by Mechanic and Hansell (1987). Although the adolescents in the high sports involvement group may have been expected to demonstrate significantly less depression than those in the low sports involvement group, they did not. One possible explanation involves the detrimental effects of overtraining. Depression is one of the cardinal signs of over-training in athletes (Budgett, 1994; Hollander, Meyers, & LeUnes , 1995). As to the relationship between low sports involvement and depression, low levels of exercise are associated with low levels of serotonin (Nash, 1996), a neurotransmitter that may play a role in depression. Further research is needed to identify factors that help explain the relationship between sports involvement and depression.