European Physical Education Review

This study assessed the relationship between children’s body image and physical activity and examined any variation in these variables. Two hundred and seventy seven British secondary school children aged 11 to 14 (mean age ± SD = 12.5 ± 0.8 years) participated in this study. Results indicated no significant relationships between body image and physical activity (all p> .05). Boys had higher body esteem scores than girls (p< .01), black children had higher body esteem scores than Asian children (p< .05) and a significant school year by gender interaction (p< .01) indicated that as school year increased body esteem increased in boys but decreased in girls. Boys and high socioeconomic status children also reported greater levels of physical activity than girls and low socioeconomic status children respectively.

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) adapted to the Greek language. The sample consisted of 586 male and female volleyball players of elite and regional level status. Data were analysed from three time points of a competitive season. For each time point, seven competing first-order and second-order factor structures were subjected to confirmatory factor analyses. The results revealed that the Greek GEQ demonstrated high internal reliability coefficients, good convergent validity and, for most of the competing models, acceptable fit indices. However, very high factor correlations rendered problematic the discriminant validity of the questionnaire. Multisample analyses examining the invariance of the seven models across competitive level and gender revealed that the models were largely invariant. Further psychometric testing is needed to examine whether the Greek GEQ relates to conceptually important personal and team correlates of group cohesion.

This article seeks, first, to offer some critical comments on the policy issues and problems surrounding the use of sporting schemes as vehicles of social policy in which the intention is to reduce levels of crime, delinquency and drug ‘abuse’ among young people; second, to examine a point of fundamental importance in policy terms: do such schemes work? In this regard, it is claimed that relatively few of such schemes - which are largely premised upon a one-sided perception of sport - have built in processes for monitoring and evaluating their impact on levels of crime or drug use among young people. It is also argued that these methodological weaknesses are exacerbated by the absence of any clearly articulated theoretical rationale for these schemes, which means that, even where success for them is claimed, it is unclear what specific aspects of the schemes account for that claimed success.

This article is an attempt to provide an alternative view of sports science and future sport worlds. For reasons to do with fundamental science, involved advocacy and committed service, and in a period of intensified globalization, it is necessary to reconfigure the nature and scope of teaching and research within the subdiscipline of sports sciences. However, just as the military-industrial complex dominates aspects of broader global processes, and of the academy in particular, advocates of the sports-industrial complex may well seek to thwart such alternative possibilities. As a result, the role of academics will be confined to the production of world and Olympic medals - sports scientists will be the technicians, and student-athletes the cogs, in the machine. In contrast to the performance efficiency ethos, a human development model is advocated.