31st Annual Student Research Conference
Competing While Dating: Perceptions of Dating Safety Among Female College Athletes
Madeline A. Moran
Dr. Paul Shapiro, Faculty Mentor
To further understand collegiate women and why they may or may not fear violence in relationships, data was collected from 262 online surveys taken by women at Truman State University detailing how variables including attitudes of athletic participation as well as levels and kinds of athletic participation influence how much respondents fear relationship violence while pursuing dating and sexual relationships. Fear of both physical and sexual violence and fear of emotional or verbal violence are operationalized into scores whose averages are compared across several categorical variables to answer questions of how athletic participation and its consequences may affect mean fear scores. Statistically significant evidence suggests that mean fear scores are different between attributes detailing the athletic activities of respondents and that the more importance a respondent places on friendships with team mates, the less she will fear relationship violence.
Keywords: fear of violence, athletic participation, sense of belonging, victimology
Topic(s):Sociology
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 311-3
Location: VH 1236
Time: 1:30