The relationship between christian beliefs and moral behavior among secondary school basketball players
Date
1992
Authors
Gidman, Greg
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Abstract
The purpose of the study was twofold: first, it compared the morality levels of senior boys basketball players attending Christian secondary schools with senior boys basketball players attending public secondary schools, as reflected by their attitudes toward keeping the rules and principles of fair play in the game of basketball; second, it compared morality levels of senior boys basketball players who have strong Christian beliefs with senior boys basketball players who have relatively weak Christian beliefs.
Six public secondary schools' senior boys basketball teams and five private Christian schools' senior boys basketball teams were selected from Greater Victoria and the lower mainland region of British Columbia. In total, there were 50 subjects from the public schools and 54 subjects from the Christian schools.
Data collection was obtained through the administration of two questionnaires. The Heinila (1974) adapted questionnaire was used to measure athletes' moral behaviour and the Shepherd Scale (Basset et al., 1981) was used to measure Christian belief.
When comparing responses of players attending Christian schools and public schools using the Heinila (1974) adapted questionnaire, no significant difference was found (p > .05). As expected when comparing Christian school and public school athlete's scores using the Shepherd Scale, a significant difference of p < .001 was found. These findings suggest that moral behaviour and moral reasoning in competitive sport are not superior among Christian school athletes as compared to public school athletes.
Two tests were conducted in order to compare the subjects with strong Christian beliefs and those subjects with relatively weak Christian beliefs. First, those scoring in the top and bottom 50% of the Shepherd Scale were compared using the Heinila (1974) adapted questionnaire scores and no significant difference was found (p > .05). A second test was conducted to compare subjects who scored in the top and bottom 25% of the Shepherd Scale. No significant difference was found (12 > .05). These findings suggest that Christians, as measured by the Shepherd Scale, do not necessarily demonstrate higher moral behaviour in competitive sport.
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UN SDG 4: Quality Education