Participants in Behavior-Analytic Sports Studies: Can Anybody Play?
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Participants in Behavior-Analytic Sports Studies: Can Anybody Play? Katarina Rotta 1 & Anita Li 1 & Alan Poling 2
# Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract Participating in athletics confers a wide range of benefits, regardless of participants’ gender or disability status. Our review of 95 behavior-analytic sports-performance articles revealed that over half of them included at least 1 female participant, but only 5 included at least 1 participant with a reported developmental disability. Given that females are often underrepresented as research participants, and that female athletes face unique barriers, it is heartening that so many articles involved female participants. Moreover, there were more female than male participants overall. However, it is surprising and distressing that so few articles involved participants with a developmental disability. Participating in sports can be a lifelong source of fitness, friends, and fun. Practitioners should encourage people of all ages, races, and genders, and from all disability categories, to find a sport they like, to learn to do it well enough to enjoy it, and to do it regularly. Researchers should give them the tools necessary to make those efforts as easy, and as fruitful, as possible. Nothing but good can come from these efforts. Keywords Bibliometric analysis . Developmental disabilities . Gender issues . Inclusivity . Sports performance . Women
Behavior analysts have developed effective interventions for improving performance in several different sports. Research in this area is summarized in a book edited by Luiselli and Reed (2011) and in recent reviews by Luiselli and Reed (2015) and Schenk and Miltenberger (2019). Sports are big business, as evidenced by the $1.06 billion in revenue generated by U.S. college sports during 2016–2017 (Rovell, 2018) and the substantially larger sums generated by professional sports, such as the National Football League, which generated over $15 billion in revenue during the 2017 season (Howmuch.net, 2018). Exemplary performance in several sports can lead to college scholarships and, in some sports, to lucrative professional contracts. But the benefits of developing sports skills are by no means limited to elite athletes. Participating in sports at all levels has health, psychological, and social benefits (Allender, Cowburn, & Foster, 2006; Eime, Young, Harvey, Charity, & Payne, 2013). Health improvements include preventing disease and ameliorating deleterious effects of aging via
* Alan Poling [email protected] 1
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA
2
Department of Psychology, Western Michigan University, Wood Hall, 1903 West Michigan Avenue, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA
enhanced skeletal muscle, tendon, and joint function due to repeated practice and training. Sports participation also reduces the risk of osteoporosis, depression, and anxiety, which are more common among women than among men, but problems for both (Fentem, 1994). Beyond that, participating in sports inc
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