Social capital and sport participation.

Children throughout the world are involved in many different activities. In the industrialized world children frequently spend their time involved in sports. In this study I investigate how social capital, as described by Coleman (1988), affects sport participation for elementary school age children. Focusing on three dependent variables, soccer participation, baseball/softball participation, and total sport participation, I explore how social capital differs by school and how these differences affect levels of participation for different sports.I use data gathered in 1998 with a sample size of 301. I test Coleman's (1988) theory of social capital. In the study I predict that soccer will be unique as compared to baseball/softball and all other sports combined in that it seems logical that it would require something special in order to get children involved. I make this hypothesis based on the fact that soccer is a relatively new introduction to the sport scene of the United States. Its popularity, then, might be linked to a type of word-of-mouth style of promotion and the family's interaction with others in the child's school.The study indicates that, indeed, soccer is different from baseball/softball and total sport participation. Family capital is moderated through school capital variables indicating that school attended significantly affects soccer participation, while family capital plays a much larger role in predicting participation in baseball/softball