Emphasis Placed on Winning in Athletics by Male High School Students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to place in perspective the widespread charges that winning is overemphasized in high school athletics. Kenyon's Attitude Toward Physical Activity Inventory was modified to include a pursuit of victory dimension of interscholastic athletics. The instrument was administered to 341 randomly selected male high school students from nine central New York state high schools. Factor analysis and split-half reliability techniques yielded satisfactory validity and reliability measures for the modified instrument. Data were analyzed by ANOVA, t tests, multiple discriminant function analysis, and Scheffé tests. They were tested at or beyond the .05 level of significance. The results showed that male high school students placed no greater emphasis on winning than on all the other dimensions of interscholastic athletics. The relatively low rank order of the winning dimension (sixth out of eight), refuted, in part, critics' charges that winning dominated high school athletics. The results also showed that athletes placed greater emphasis on winning than did nonathletes. There was no difference in attitude toward winning according to the type of activity pursued (team vs. individual sports).