Sports Participation: Gambling Situations and Learning Opportunities
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Sports Participation: Gambling Situations and Learning Opportunities: An Exploratory Investigation Funded by: The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre. Submitted by: Glen Markle, PhD The Ontario Skills Training Group. February 17, 2003. TABLE of CONTENTS Pages 1.0 INTRODUCTION 4 1.1 Background to the Project: Some Working Assumptions 4 1.2 Project Goals and Deliverables: Revised 4 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW: Report 5 2.1 General Concepts and Propositions: A Sociological Perspective 5 2.1.1 Self-Concept and Social Roles 5 • Self-Concept, Identity, and Self-Esteem 7 • Roles and Situations 7 • Role Salience 7 2.1.2 Development of Self-Concept: Socialization –a Learning Process 8 • Role Acquisition, Role Content, Significant Others 8 • Risk and the Risk Society 10 • Social Function of Games and Sports 12 2.1.3 Self-Concept and Motivation 14 • Self-Efficacy or Agency 14 • Self-Esteem and Self Presentation 15 • Consistency 16 • Self-Actualization 17 2.2 Sports Evidence: Self-Concept and Gambling 18 2.2.1 Sports Participation and Socialization 18 • Learning versus Selection 18 • Significant Others: Coaches and Media 20 • Levels of Participation: Elite Athletes and Expert Fans 21 2.2.2 Sports Identity, Salience, and the Motivation to Gamble 23 • The Work of Professor T.J. Curry: Ohio State University 23 • Figure 1: Role-Identity, Role-Performance Model 26 3.0 EXPERT INTERVIEWS: Report 27 3.1 The Experts and the Interview 27 3.1.1 Question 1a: Summary 29 Question 1b: Summary 30 3.1.2 Question 2: Summary 30 3.1.3 Question 3: Summary 34 3.1.4 Question 4: Summary 35 3.1.5 Question 5:Summary 36 3.1.6 Question 6: Summary 37 3.1.7 Question 7: Summary 38 4.0 WORKING ASSUMPTIONS: A Revised Perspective 39 5.0 THE MEASUREMENT of RISK: Additional Considerations 40 5.1 Brief History of Alternative Approaches 40 • Rational Model 42 • Discourse Model 42 • Nominal Model 42 2 • Perceptions Model 43 . Intuitive Approach 43 . Choice-Theoretic Approach 45 5.2 Application of Perceptions Model: An Operational Protocol 47 • Sports Risk Management Situational Choice Inventory 47 • Sports Risk Management Situational Assessment Inventory 49 6.0 FUTURE PROJECT PROPOSALS 50 6.1 Testing The Revised Perspective 50 • Measurement Instruments • Male Athletes: Role –Identities and Gambling 6.2 Coaches and Health Promoting Schools: 50 A Healthy Life Style Program 6.3 Sports Media in Relation to Sports Participation and Gambling 51 6.4 The Gambling Culture of the Sports Pub 51 6.5 Women Athletes and Gambling: Changing Role Perspectives 7.0 BUDGET SUMMARY 52 8.0 APPENDIX 1: Bibliography 53 9.0 APPENDIX 2: Interview Protocol and Transcripts 63 10.0 APPENDIX 3: Sports Identities Index 144 3 1.0 INTRODUCTION It has been well documented that males are more likely to become problem gamblers than are females; it has also become increasingly evident that young male athletes might have an even greater propensity to become problem gamblers than do male non-athletes. The Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre has provided a funding incentive to begin to explore a social learning approach to understanding this issue; that is, that gambling behaviours, risk-taking, and risk management might be learned through intensive and extensive participation in sports activities. Such activities then become a meaningful opportunity for appropriate prevention intervention. 1.1 Background to the Project: Some Working Assumptions The Introduction to the proposal for this funding grant outlined the following working assumptions as guideline directions for exploration: • In all cultures, sports and games model values and roles instrumental for everyday living. • In modern cultures, some of these roles and values played out in sports and games have to do with competition and achievement via knowledge/ skills and risk-taking- or gambling. • To the extent that competitive sports events provide various gambling situations and opportunities to take risks or not during the emergent play action, participation in them also provides an opportunity to learn to manage risk and to incorporate the role of risk-taker/gambler into the self-concept or identity. • Gambling and risk-taking by athletes outside the sports event might be explained by an individual propensity for self-presentation and maintenance; that is, athletes with a heightened gambling/risk-taking identity will actively seek out opportunities to demonstrate their risk taking and management competence. 1.2 Project Goals and Deliverables: Revised In the original proposal “gambling situation” was a key concept. Consequently, the goals of the project were stated in terms of developing an operational protocol for defining gambling situations in sports events and for testing the protocol with a small sample of experts, players, and spectators. Feedback from the review team at OPGRC questioned the inclusion of spectators at this time in the model and recommended that the project investigate not just “defining” gambling situations in sports events but also how to begin to “measure” these gambling situations. Accordingly, the literature review should also be expanded to investigate how risk has been measured. The investigator replied that interviews could be used to begin to describe gambling 4 situations and various response options and that appropriate statistical item analyses might be the subject of a future grant. Accordingly, the revised goals of the project are: • To report on attempts to substantiate the above working assumptions via literature review and select expert interviews. • To produce an operational protocol for measuring gambling situations in sports events. 2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW: Report 2.1 General Concepts and Propositions: A Sociological Perspective Bio-psychological factors, “sensation-seeking” for example, do have utility for explaining a propensity to take risks and to gamble (Zukerman, 167, 168). However, Cooper, et al (33) concluded that their motivational model, which included personality and affect regulatory processes provided a highly general but incomplete account of risky behaviours. Such bio-psychological predispositions have limited power to explain the enormous variety of ways that individuals might express their gambling behaviours (Donnelly, 46). Gambling and risk-taking behaviour do occur in a context in which cultural values and socio-structural networks and opportunities all factor in on the individual decision process (Dickson, et al, 42). “ Risk is whatever is defined as risky at a particular time, in a particular place, by a particular group of people” ( Frey, 59, p139) Notwithstanding the ultimate potential for a comprehensive bio-psycho- sociological theory of human motivation (Gove, 76), this discussion will focus on the more limited part that sociology might play in our understanding of gambling behaviour among male athletes. A bibliography of literature reviewed for this report is reproduced as Appendix 1. 2.1.1 Self-Concept and Social Roles For sociologists, gambling among male athletes might be investigated at three levels of analysis: culture, structure, and the person or self. (See Hays(80) for an attempt to clarify ambiguities among these levels.) It is the self that corresponds to personality for psychologists and it is at this level of investigation that sociologists might seek to understand the individual athlete’s motivation to gamble. Gecas (65) has provided a comprehensive overview of the self-concept. There is a fundamental distinction between the concepts of “self” and “self-concept”. The distinction corresponds to two major schools of thought within the Symbolic Interactionist tradition in sociology: the Processual Interactionists and the Structural Interactionists. According to Gecas (65, p3.), the self, as process, “…is the process of reflexivity which emanates 5 from the dialectic between the I and Me”, and it is this reflexivity “…that develops in social interaction and is based on the social character of human language.” Furthermore, the self “…is itself not accessible to empirical investigation” (Gecas, 80, p3.) For Structuralists, on the other hand, the self-concept “… is a product of this reflexive activity. It is the concept that the individual has of himself as a physical, social, and spiritual or moral being” (Gecas, 65, p3.) It is the self-concept, moreover, which is subject to empirical investigation via measurement and testable propositions. More concretely, according to Turner (155, p2.), the person-the self- concept-“…consists of all the roles in an individual’s repertoire…” and “… is best described in terms of the roles that are still played when not called for and that color the way in which other roles are played.” Borrowing from Turner, Gordon (75, 405.) states that “roles are among the most basic structural components of both social systems and personal systems: the value aspects of roles connect person to culture, the normative aspects of roles provide motivation to conduct and structure to social action and the sense-making or interpretive aspects of roles determine much of personal cognition, attitudinal predispositions, memories, and plans.” For Structuralists, then, the individual person or self-concept is constructed of social roles and it is this concept of role that links the person to social structure and to culture and that is amenable to empirical investigation. From a sociological perspective, to begin to understand the motivation to gamble and take risks among male athletes is to first conceptualize these behaviours in terms of role enactment or role performance