Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Major

Educational Psychology

Major Professor

Eugene Schoch

Committee Members

Patricia A. Beitel, Schuyler Huck, Patricia Ball

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the interrelationships of three concepts: sex-rple orientation, self-esteem, and attitudes toward the women's role within the context of the female varsity ath lete population, and also to determine if female varsity athletes dif fer on these three concepts from females in general. One hundred and thirty-six full-time female undergraudate stu dents enrolled at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, during the 1977-1978 academic year participated in this study. The control group consisted of the entire University of Tennessee population (68) of female varsity athletes. The control group comprised a similar num ber, 68, of non-athletes who attested to no prior athletic experience in organized sports. All subjects were administered a test battery consisting of: the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, the Texas Social Behavior Inventory, and the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. A chi-square analysis showed the two groups to differ signifi cantly on their sex-role orientation with the athletes being catego rized as androgynous and the non-athletes as feminine. A 4 X 2 multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with the independent variables being sex-role orientation and athletic status. The two dependent variables were self-esteem and attitudes toward the women's role. The MANOVA for the main effect of sex-role orientation proved to be significant at the .05 level by the Lambda Criterion. Two univariate analyses of variance were computed on each 11 iii of the two dependent variables and both proved to be significant at the .05 level. The Newman-Keuls technique found the androgynous and masculine subjects to be significantly higher in self-esteem than the feminine or undifferentiated groups. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed on the two dependent variables for each of the four sex-role orientation groups. A strong positive relationship was found to exist between the two vari ables for the masculine group, a low positive relationship for the androgynous group, and a low negative association for the feminine group. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed for the two dependent variables on each of the eight groups of sex-role orienta tion and athletic status. A high positive correlation coefficient was computed for the masculine non-athletes and a very high negative correlation found for both the feminine and the undifferentiated athletes.

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