Research Output
“We do it for the team” – Student-athletes’ initiation practices and their impact on group cohesion.
  Hazing or inappropriate initiation activities are a well-documented occurrence within university sport team societies. This study examined the occurrence of initiation activities in relation to team cohesion. One hundred and fifty-four participants completed the Group Environment Questionnaire and the Team Cohesion Questionnaire in relation to initiation activities at their institution. Results revealed that athletes were more aware of appropriate than inappropriate initiation activities, with males being aware of a higher occurrence of inappropriate activities than females. Results were also analysed by sport type, revealing that interactive team sport players recorded higher hazing scores than co-acting players. With regard to cohesion, no significant relationship was found between hazing and cohesion suggesting the notion that initiations enhance cohesion in sport is untrue.

  • Type:

    Article

  • Date:

    05 January 2016

  • Publication Status:

    Published

  • Publisher

    Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

  • DOI:

    10.1080/1612197X.2015.1121507

  • Cross Ref:

    10.1080/1612197X.2015.1121507

  • ISSN:

    1612-197X

  • Library of Congress:

    RC1200 Sports Medicine

  • Dewey Decimal Classification:

    796 Athletic & outdoor sports & games

Citation

Lafferty, M., Wakefield, C., & Brown, H. (2016). “We do it for the team” – Student-athletes’ initiation practices and their impact on group cohesion. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 15(4), 438-446. https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2015.1121507

Authors

Keywords

Student-athletes; initiations; cohesion; interacting; co-acting;

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