The Social Environment in Children’s Sport: Cohesion, Social Acceptance, Commitment, and Enjoyment

The primary purpose of the current study was to determine whether perceptions of cohesion mediated the relationship between social acceptance and individual commitment and enjoyment in children’s sport. A secondary purpose involved the assessment of the temporal nature of cohesion over the course of an athletic season. A total of 209 (Mage = 9.87 years; SD = 1.34) recreational soccer players completed questionnaires at three time points (T1 – social acceptance, cohesion; T2 – cohesion; T3 – commitment, enjoyment, cohesion) during an athletic season. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicated that task cohesion mediated the relationship between social acceptance and commitment and enjoyment, whereas social cohesion did not. In addition, individual perceptions of cohesion did not vary significantly over the course of the season. These results will be discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications. As one example, the relative stability in terms of perceptions of cohesion in this population could inform future intervention work aimed at enriching the social environment

EXAMINING HOW SAME-GENDER AND MIXED-GENDER COUPLES NAVIGATE SEXUAL ISSUES IN THEIR RELATIONSHIPS

Sexual scripts—the definitions and expectations that individuals hold for sexual interactions—are thought to play an important role in the maintenance of sexual well-being. Sexual scripts can be rigid or flexible, and they can be concordant or discordant between members of a couple. Sex therapists support sexual script flexibility for maintaining sexual and relationship satisfaction when couples are navigating sexual issues. However, empirical research examining the role of sexual script flexibility and the degree of script concordance/discordance in couples’ sexual well-being has been limited, due in part to the limited measures available. Furthermore, within the existing research, there has been an unfortunate tendency to exclude individuals in same-gender relationships – perpetuating the long-standing knowledge gap in the literature on positive sexuality in diverse relationships. To address these gaps in the literature, we conducted a series of online studies that recruited individuals in diverse relationships. A measure of individual sexual script flexibility in response to sexual issues was developed (Chapter 2); in addition, the structure of an existing measure assessing couple sexual scripts in response to a sexual issue was evaluated (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 examined how individuals in diverse relationships compared on measures of individual sexual script flexibility and on couple sexual scripts. Findings suggest that there are more similarities than differences across diverse couples. Chapter 5 explored how flexibility in an individual’s approach to sexual issues relates to sexual well-being, specifically by assessing sexual communication and partner responses as mediators. Results suggest that individual sexual script flexibility relates to sexual well-being through reciprocal partner processes. Collectively, this research program suggests that more similarities than differences exist between individuals in same- and mixed-gender relationships, and that partners are important to consider in the relationship between individual sexual script flexibility and sexual well-being. These findings have implications for sex and couple therapy; these results emphasize the importance of interventions that target both members of the couple, and further our understanding of sexuality in same- and mixed-gender relationships.