Sport as a dangerous environment: a research on homophobia and bullying in sports-related contexts

Physical activity is an important determinant of health and overall well-being because improves one’s quality of life and reduces the risk of mortality. For example, low levels of physical activity are associated with increased risk for adverse health outcomes, such as coronary heart disease and cancer, and poor mental health throughout the lifetime (Cooper et al., 2000; Nelson, Lust, Story, & Ehlinger, 2008; Zelli, Reichmann, Lucidi, & Grano, 2007). However, some studies suggested that sports-related contexts may be a particularly problematic setting with remarkable homophobic and heterosexist behavior (Eng, 2008; Griffin, 1993, 1998; Herek & Garnets, 2007; Meyer, 2003; Peguero, 2008; Symons et al., 2010; Volk & Lagzdins, 2009). This could be especially true for the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and all other sexual orientations and gender identities that persons may identify with (LGBT+), who tend to be an ‘at-risk’ group due to prejudice and discrimination suffered. This dissertation is divided in four chapters, containing six studies that are closely related to each other. In more detail, we developed and administered survey questionnaires to capture information on levels of homophobia among different Italian sample (both sports participants and non-participants) in the first four studies. The protocols were approved by the Ethics Commission of the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology of the Sapienza University of Rome. In addition, in order to analyze the role of physical activity and victimization also in other countries, we used two representative sample of the U.S. population for the fifth and sixth study: The study 5 used data from the 2017 Texas Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), while the study 6 analyzed data from the 2013–2015 California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS). I worked with these National databases during my visiting scholar period at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), from February 13, 2018 to May 17, 2018, under the supervision of Stephen T. Russell, Distinguished Professor at Population Research Center, Human Development and Family Sciences. All studies have been published or submitted in international scientific journals (according to the doctoral regulations of the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology of Sapienza University of Rome). A reference to the journal for each manuscript published in or submitted to are presented on references section.