School Sports Participation and Academic Achievement in Middle and High School

Objective: Previous research has found that physical activity has considerable potential to promote child development and, thus, should be of interest to social workers. An important gap in the literature regards the potential of school sports to increase academic outcomes. The goal of this cross-sectional analysis was to examine a partially mediated hypothesis linking school sports participation with academic achievement via positive body-weight image and global self-esteem. Method: Data are from a convenience sample of 3,186 students in the 6th to 9th grades from 14 schools in one North Carolina county. All measures were taken from the School Success Profile survey. Latent variable structural equation modeling was used with appropriate estimation methods for the nonnormal, ordinal, and clustered data. Results: The measurement model and structural models exhibited acceptable fit. Results indicate that school sports participation was significantly associated with academic achievement, positive body-image perceptions, and self-esteem. Overall, participation in school sports demonstrated a significant standardized effect (.225) on academic achievement. Comparison with an alternative model comprising only nonsports extracurricular-activity participation found that the school sports model was both distinct and preferred. Conclusions: Findings suggest that school sports may promote several outcomes of interest to social workers, and that social work research should further investigate the mechanisms underlying these relationships.