Hansen, D.M., et al., Differences in developmental experiences for commonly used categories of organized youth activities, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2010.07.001 [in press].
Because the specific activity that interests me (circus) falls somewhere between the categories of athletics and performing arts, I am excited to find someone looking at differences within classifications of OST activities, rather than simply comparing the outcomes of youth in these categories to each other. This study found no major differences between different types of academic clubs, different kinds of service activities or different community-oriented activities, and therefore concludes that these three categories are good constructs for continued study. However, for sports participation they found significant differences between team and individual sports, and they also found significant differences between music, performing arts and art clubs, indicating that the overarching labels of “sport” and “arts” should be looked at in terms of these subcategories. The article presents a theory that “interdependency” and “performance” may be factors underlying the differences found within sports and arts, but sadly, their research does not extend to more than the presentation of this conjecture and a suggestion that future researchers should take it on.
I think this article provides a necessary reminder that these categories that have been so thoroughly compared to each other have never really been validated, and hopefully it will help future studies move into analysis of the underlying factors that contribute to YD outcomes.
9 / 10 Jetts. They lost one for getting me all excited about constructs like interdependency and then saying “but that’s just our theory.”
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