Peer-reviewed article
Sports-team participation and risk behaviors among US high school students: behavior-specific and sex-heterogeneous associations in the national YRBS, 2011–2023
Fa-liang Sun, Qing Liu ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study used seven rounds of the US national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2011–2023, 110,409 records) to compare high school students who play on sports teams with those who do not. Sports-team players were more likely to use alcohol and to get into physical fights. They were less likely to smoke cigarettes or use marijuana. The patterns differed by sex. The authors conclude that sports participation is neither uniformly protective nor uniformly risky, and that prevention efforts should be tailored to specific behaviors and contexts.
Key points
- Sports-team participation was linked to higher adjusted alcohol use (+4.46 percentage points; 95% CI +3.38 to +5.55).
- Sports-team participation was linked to more physical fighting (+2.53 points; 95% CI +1.62 to +3.43).
- Sports-team participation was linked to less cigarette smoking (−3.46 points) and less marijuana use (−1.49 points).
- Associations differed by sex for all four outcomes: the positive links with fighting and alcohol were stronger in males, and the inverse links with smoking and marijuana were stronger in females.
- The overall pattern held in sensitivity analyses, but alcohol showed differences across survey cycles.
Limitations
The repeated cross-sectional design shows associations only and cannot show that sports participation causes any of these behaviors. The abstract does not describe the sports involved or the mechanisms behind the differences, and the findings apply to US high school students only. The country hint of CN does not match the document, which is about the US.
Abstract
Sports-team participation is often regarded as a favorable adolescent context, but whether its associations are consistent across distinct risk behaviors and across sex remains unresolved. We conducted a repeated cross-sectional analysis of seven U. S. National Youth Risk Behavior Survey cycles (2011–2023; 110,409 records) using survey-weighted regression and marginal standardization. Participation in one or more sports teams was associated with higher adjusted prevalence of alcohol use (PD, +4.46 percentage points; 95% CI, +3.38 to +5.55) and physical fighting (+2.53; 95% CI, +1.62 to +3.43), but lower prevalence of cigarette smoking (−3.46; 95% CI, −4.10 to −2.82) and marijuana use (−1.49; 95% CI, −2.33 to −0.66); all Holm-adjusted p < 0.001. Sex heterogeneity was observed for all four outcomes (all interaction p < 0.001): positive associations with fighting and alcohol were more pronounced among males, whereas inverse associations with cigarette smoking and marijuana use were more evident among females. The overall behavioral pattern was retained in participation-level and prespecified sensitivity analyses, although alcohol showed evidence of survey-cycle heterogeneity. Sports-team participation therefore corresponded to a behavior-specific and sex-heterogeneous, rather than uniformly lower- or higher-risk, behavioral profile. These findings may inform prevention science and intervention development in U. S. high school settings by supporting behavior-specific, context-sensitive strategies that address the social conditions surrounding sports participation rather than treating participation itself as uniformly protective or harmful.