Little research has been done to date on the contribution of sport to a lifestyle of community participation. This is despite theoretical support from the social capital literature for the suggestion that the relationships and trust fostered through sport participation should lead to involvement in community activities outside of sport. The present study addresses this gap in the research by testing whether participation in organized youth sport positively predicts involvement in particular community activities as an adult. Based on an analysis of survey data collected from a representative sample of Canadians, the findings show that youth sport participation was positively related to adult involvement in community activities, although the predictive effects of youth sport participation were small. The findings also show that the effects of youth sport participation on adult participation in community activities lasted throughout the lifecycle. Both findings are consistent with the social capital literature.
A small number of previous studies using convenience samples from outside Canada, and mostly for males, show positive relationships between physical height and holding a position of authority as a manager or supervisor. The present study employs Multiple Classification Analysis to assess the generality of these patterns to a representative sample of full-time Canadian workers (2,210 males and 1,815 females) using seven alternative measures of authority status. The results for male workers, after controls, generally show significant positive relationships between height and authority status. The controlled analyses for female workers, however, do not. Additional analyses for males show height to be a comparatively strong predictor relative to other social background predictors of authority status. Alternative interpretations of the patterns of findings are discussed.
The potential role that a religious background plays in determining adult levels of community participation in Canada has, to date, received limited research attention. The present study examines this relationship by testing whether involvement in a religious organization as a youth positively predicts four measures of adult community participation: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, participation in voluntary organizations, and community association membership. Drawing on data from the 2000 National Survey of Giving, Volunteering, and Participating (NSGVP), the findings show that involvement in a religious organization as a youth positively predicts all four adult community participation measures. The analysis also shows that, unlike other youth activities, the number of Canadian youths involved in religious organizations has declined in recent decades. The implications of this decline, combined with the evidence that religious involvement as a youth appears to be a good predictor of adult community participation, are discussed.
Researchers using structural equation modeling (SEM) aspire to learn about the world by seeking models with causal specifications that match the causal forces extant in the world. This quest for a model matching existing worldly causal forces constitutes an ontology that orients, or perhaps reorients, thinking about measurement STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING, 14(2), validity. This article illustrates several ways the seemingly innocuous quest for structural equation models that mirror "the world beyond" confronts entrenched notions of measurement validity. The article begins by considering simple measurement models and ends by "discovering" a new class of indicators called reactive indicators. Reactive indicators act as both the cause and effect of an underlying latent variable. The identifiability of a simple model containing a reactive indicator is proven and a research example illustrating the use of a reactive indicator is provided. However, the real challenge is to understand how an indicator can be both a cause and effect of the latent it measures. The understanding does not come from complying with the traditional rules for reliability and validity, but from focusing on the quest to make the structural equation model match the structuring of the worldly forces we seek to understand. Valid measurement in the context of a weirdly structured world requires an equally weird structural equation model. SEM RESEARCH ONTOLOGYMost structural equation modeling (SEM) researchers do not doubt the existence of an underlying causally structured world. For them, the issue is not whether a causal world exists but which particular causal forces provided the data at their fingertips. The ontological commitment to seek the structure of an existing causal world is buttressed by multiple epistemological commitments concerning the most trustworthy methodological means via which researchers can come to know the extant world. The epistemological commitments include the methodological admonitions: to avoid contradictory causal claims, to seek logical implications of one's causal claims, to seek evidence relevant to those implications, and to be diligent in making observations that test one's causal understandings.This article does not pursue measurement and validity in the context of epistemology or methodological diligence (attentiveness to gathering and handling data). Nor does it pursue the philosophy of whether the world's causal structure is fundamental, or merely coincidentally parallel because it floats on some unfathomably deeper sea of "structures that produce causal structuring." Instead, the consequences of the research quest to supplant the current hazy and incomplete understanding of the worldly forces is pursued by locating, representing, and encapsulating the actual worldly causal forces within a structural equation model. The article examines the consequences of making an ontological commitment to the structured existence of underlying causal forces as producing the values of observed variables-namely the research co...
Guided by the notion of a trickle-down effect, the present study examines whether sport participation in Canada increased following the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Comparing rates of sport participation prior to and following the Games using nationally representative data, the results suggest that the Olympics had almost no impact on sport participation in Canada, although there does appear to be a modest "bounce" in sport participation in the Vancouver area immediately following the Vancouver Games. As such, if the trickle-down effect did occur, the analysis suggests that the effect was locally situated, short-lived, and small.
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