Who Plays and Who Benefits: Gender, Interscholastic Athletics, and Academic Outcomes

Using a nationally representative sample of adolescents, this article examines how various individual and contextual characteristics are related to the likelihood of interscholastic athletic participation. Girls are significantly less likely than boys to participate. The influence of socioeconomic background, siblings, family structure, year in school, attendance at a private school, size of the school, region of the country, and urbanicity have similar effects on socializing boys and girls into athletics. However, the gender difference in participation rates are greater for blacks than whites. Results indicate that some of the association between athletic participation and academic outcomes is due to the tendency for better students to participate in athletics. Net of these effects, analyses indicate that participation in athletics has a positive influence on adolescents' academic outcomes. The positive influence of athletic participation on unexcused absences and educational expectations is significantly stronger for boys than for girls.

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