Is Your Athletic Department Accepting? Attitudes Towards Sexual Orientation at the D3 level

Beebe, Amanda

Is Your Athletic Department Accepting? Attitudes Towards Sexual Orientation at the D3 level    

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/45950

Author(s)

Beebe, Amanda

Date Issued

2018

Abstract

Research on how accepting and diverse athletic departments are at universities around America is limited. There has recently been more light surrounding gay individuals in the athletic field, since more professional athletes are coming out and how teams treat individuals as equal is important. This study is designed to look at the athletic environment and team’s beliefs, specifically towards gay individuals, at Allegheny College a D3 liberal arts school. A survey was given to four sports teams to measure their levels of heterosexism and attitudes towards gay or lesbian individuals. Results compared the four team’s individual attitudes towards gay and lesbian individuals. The teams were split into two categories based on whether they have a high perceived number of homosexuals (HPNH) or a low perceived number of homosexuals (LPNH), and compared attitudes between different teams. Gender was also used as a variable to see if attitudes change depending on the gender of the individual. Individual player perceptions of their team were compared to others’ perceptions of their team to see if other people perceived their team differently. What year the individual is was also compared to their attitudes, to see if attitudes change depending on year. Overall, this study found that gender does play a role in how accepting individuals are and certain teams are more accepting than others. It was also found that players on teams with HPNH agreed with the perception they have more gay individuals. Year as well as LPNH compared to HPNH did not show significant effects on attitudes.

Major

Psychology

First Reader(s)

Pickering, Ryan