This section presents a description of the research methodology used by the researcher, a description of how the research was set up, the instruments used, and the sample used. The purpose of this research study was to examine the extent in which cultural diversity in women influences their participation in sports. In order to investigate the relationship between women participation in sports and cultural influences, the researcher adopted survey research design. Survey methodology was used because of the unique nature of the study. It required gathering information from primary sources. Survey design also allows the researcher to use a sample which represents a larger population. The data analyzed from the sample population is used to make a conclusion for the whole population.
Quantitative research design was selected for the primary reason of quantifying the main variables in numeric terms. Quantitative research explains or predicts the relationship between variables, measures variables, tests theories and applies results to the population. Qualitative research could not be used because the researcher did not intend to explore the meaning of perceptions and experiences to develop understanding; this form of research is appropriate when exploring a phenomenon in which one seeks a deeper understanding of lived experiences and perceptions.
Sampling
Quantitative research design uses probability sampling to come up with a representative sample of the entire population. The population of this research is composed of the female students at the university. The researcher noted that university students have a lot of experience in physical and co curriculum activities both from high school and at the university. A total of 200 students were chosen for the survey. The students ranged from first year to senior level students. The selection process relied on random sampling in order to avoid biasness and to have a representative sample of the whole population. The age of the participants ranged from 20 to 25 years. The respondents were also selected from different cultural and ethnic background including Muslims and Christians. The researcher was also interested in both female students who participated in sports and those who did not participate in any sports.
Sampling for the faculty members and sports officials at the university was done through non random sampling techniques. This is because the population was small and there was no need to select a representative sample.
Research instruments
After reviewing secondary data and consulting professionals, a survey instrument for data collection was developed. The questionnaire tool was approved based on a threefold framework. The instrument had to be able to examine the cultural diversity practices in women that either promote or prevent the participation of women in sports. Secondly, the instrument had to examine the level of gender biasness that exists in the set up of the study. Finally, the instrument also had to be able to examine the topic based on demographic factors.
Interviews were also conducted administrations team of various sporting programs in the university. The aim of the interviews was to establish whether the policies adopted for recruitment to various sporting activities were bias in any way to women. It further examined whether the recruitment process prevented or encouraged women from all culture to take in sports. The focus of the interviews was also to make observations of the situation at the university with regards to the participation of women in sports. In addition, the researcher had interest in knowing whether faculty members had offered any scholarships to female students who showed potentials of succeeding in sports. Such factors were important for the researcher because they would assist to control the variables and identify if indeed culture acts as a barrier or promoter of female participation in sporting activities at the university. The interviews targeted coaches and sports administrators since it was assumed that they have all the necessary information to assist in meeting the objectives of the research.
Procedure for data collection
The researcher first retrieved a data base of female students at the university. This database was used to randomly sample participants for the study. Then the selected students were contacted to request their participation in the study. The mode of contact included phone calls, texting, and email where appropriate. Upon agreeing to participate into the study, the participants were given the questionnaire materials to respond to and return. This procedure resulted in 180 completed questionnaires being returned. This was a response rate of 90 percent. The interviews were done upon request by the selected sports officials and coaches at the university.
Limitation of study
The results of the study cannot be used to make general inferences about an entire population of a country where the study was conducted. The results are however limited to the population of the university.
Data analysis and Results
This section discusses how the data collected was analyzed and further presents the results of the analysis. The data collected was analyzed separately for all the key variables involved. Women participation in sports was the independent variable being related to various other dependent variables: religious beliefs, taboos, cultural values, male dominance and personal interest. The respondents were asked whether they believe any of these variables hinder or encourage their participation in sports. They were to indicate the level in which they agree or disagree with the influence of these variables in sports participation as women. The results were analyzed differently for female students who already participate in sports with those who do not take part in any sporting activity.
The questions developed in the questionnaires which quantified the variables in numeric terms were based on the Likert scale which is coded according to the degree of agreement or disagreement.
Discussion
This section develops a discussion of the results found from the analysis. It discusses the implication of the results while making comparison with results from similar studies. Generally, the results of this study indicated that women are affected by cultural norms in the society to some extent. They tend to either participate or not participate in sports because of cultural values and norms that exist in the society. Factors such as religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, clothing styles, taboos, and male dominance were found to impact interest of women in sports.
Table 2 shows the correlation result of the data. There is a negative correlation between the independent variable and the three dependant variable. This implies that the three cultures aspects used as the dependent variables have some moderate negative or opposite relationship with participation of women in sports. This implies that as one variable increases, the other tends to decrease. In the context of the study, as influence of religion tends to increase, then female participation in sports tends to decrease. Similarly as male dominance tends to increase, female participation in sports drops.
The respondents noted that there are certain sports activities that are very involving and require masculine strength to be able to enjoy the activity. They noted that it is a good idea to separate both male and female when it come to such sporting activities. Because of the nature of certain sports, interest among female students because low. According to a research study by Hardin and Greer (2009), the respondent were also able to note that there are certain sport activities that generally more masculine than feminine. The study examined 14 different sports activities and the respondents were to rate them as either masculine or feminine based on a scale. The scale was from one to 1 to 4 where 1 represented hyper masculine sports, 2 represented action sports, 3 represented neutral sports, and 4 represented feminine sports. It could be noted from this study by Hardin and Greer that the sports that required a lot of stamina such as rugby and weightlifting were generally considered masculine. However, activities such as volleyball and gymnastics required little stamina and female participation was more compared to male participation.
Melnick, Sabo, & Vanfossen (1992) notes that the there has been little research done to investigate the participation of minority groups in sports. A lot of research studies have focused mainly on boys and girls as a whole. This particular research also measured the participation of female students from minority groups in sports. From the results, on table 1, it can be identified that minority groups tend to participate in particular sports which their culture dictates as a feminine. However, female students from minority groups are very much active in sports. Given the opportunity to participate the students tend to utilize it. From table 1 it can be seen that female participation in sports from minority groups is 75% indicating an extensive participation. A similar result was also identified by Melnick, Sabo, & Vanfossen (1992) found that the percentage of female participation by African American students was high compared to white and Hispanic American students. This is despite the fact that there were more White and Hispanic American students interviewed than black American students. The results of the study also suggested that the perception students have over sports is that of a social need. This therefore implies that culture in modern society encourages students to participate in sports as a form of building relationship by interacting with each other. Sport is viewed as a form of extra curricula activity in school and more students want to participate in sports. The need to excel in academics was also shown to have little influence for female students to participate in sports.
When it comes to religion, Muslim women are mostly affected by their cultural values in the way they approach issues in their lives. Their religious beliefs and values play a central role in their participation in sports. In most cases, religious beliefs tend to act as a hindrance to their participation in sports. This is supported by the findings in table 1. Many of the Muslim female students interviewed did not participate in any sporting activity and also lacked the personal interest due to the influence of their religious values. A similar study by indicated otherwise that many Muslim women have a lot of personal interest in sports and physical activities but because of the influence of their culture and religion, they are forced not to participate. According to the result of the Maesam-T-AbdulRazak, Mohd Sofian, & Abd-Latif (2010) study, the respondents’ reasons behind their interest in sports are because of health and fitness sake. On the contrary, Islamic religion does not prevent women from taking part in physical activities. In fact it equally encourages both men and women to participate in sports.
However, the women say that some of the religious values such as family, dress code, and society tend to stand on the way between their interest and actual participation in sports. The study says that Muslim women are completely put off in some sports when their dictates that they should cover themselves in hijabs. Parents would discourage their daughters to take in sports where they have to dress ‘inappropriately’. At the same time, the society would be against any Muslim woman who dresses ‘inappropriately’ because of sports. However, the study also notes that there are advances made in sports to address the issue of dress codes so as to encourage many Arab and Islamic women to participate in sports.
The study by supports some of the findings of this research. Rao says that factors such as male dominance and sex roles have influenced the interest women have in sports in addition to influencing their actual participation. In the study Rao sought to investigate the constraints that prevent Indian women from taking part in sports. It was found that religious values played a significant role of restricting women from taking part in sports. These same assertions were found in this study where Muslim women tend to avoid taking part in physical activities because of their religious values. The Study by Rao (2010) utilized college students with a sample size of 1090 participants from 12 different states in India.
Recommendations and conclusion
Based on the findings, it is apparent that culture diversity in women influences their participation in sports. For some, they tend to be more active in sports and physical activities by virtue of their culture, while for others culture tends to hinder their participation despite having personal interest. The results show that religion and societal stereotypes are the biggest influence of female participation in sports. Women tend to choose sports that are socially considered feminine. The results also show that women from particular cultures are very active physically and tend to appreciate the value of sports. On the negative note, Muslim women are the biggest victims of cultural influences in sports. They not only are affected by the gender stereotypes but also religious values. As identified by , Muslim women are affected by their dress codes, families, and the society. They can never be allowed to participate in sports that would force them o dress ‘inappropriately’ or against the values of their religion.
According to a report on physical education and health in Australia, it is apparent that culture influences participation in sports. The report identifies cultural influence of socialization to have a central role in the choices women make in regards to sports participation. In schools, female students will tend to chose sporting activities identified for female socialization. The process of socialization gives women the desire to fit in and this influences their preferences for various sporting activities. However, the report also says that there has been effort made towards changing the stereotypes and gender roles with regards to sports. This has created a situation where women develop interest in sports that were once considered masculine such as rugby. The article says that schools in Australia have put policies which discourage gender biasness in all sporting activities. There are women leagues for various sporting activities. The article further notes that gender stereotypes will not disappear immediately or completely. However, there is need to continue to challenge the gender stereotypes that exist in sports.
References
Aday, L. A. (2005). Designing and Conducting Health Surveys (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Australian sports ministry. (2000). Tennis. Retrieved from http://fulltext.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/2000/ascpub/pdf/tennis%202.pdf
Bailey, R. (2008). Design of Comparative Experiments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Creswell, J. W., Fetters, M. D., & Ivankova, N. V. (2007). Designing A Mixed Methods Study In Primary Care. Annals of Family medicine, 2(1), 7-12.
Eastman, S., & Billings, A. (1999). Gender Parity in the Olympics: Hyping Women Athletes, Favoring Men Athletes. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 140-170.
Filetti, J. S. (2001). From Lizzie Borden to Lorena Bobbitt: Violent Women and Gendered Justice. Journal of American Culture,, vol.35, No. 3, pp.471–484.
Gender Agender. (2010, July 1). Women in tennis- what the duece? Retrieved from Gender Agender: http://www.gender-agenda.org.uk/discuss/484/women-in-tennis-what-the-deuce/
Goos, P., & Jones, B. (2011). Optimal Design of Experiments: A Case Study Approach. Wiley.
Groves, R. (2010). Survey methodology (2nd ed.). Belmont: Duxbury Press.
Hannan, C. (2006). Challenging the Gender Order. Fourth World Conference on Women and Sport,. Kumamoto, Japan.
Higgs, C., K Weiller, & Martin, S. (2006). Gender Bias in the 1996 Olympic Games. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Vol. 27, No. 1, 52-64.
International Working Group on Women and Sport. (2008). Women and sports. Retrieved from http://www.iwggti.org/e/brighton/index.htm
Kelan, E. (2009). Gender Fatigue - The Ideological Dilemma of Gender Neutrality and Discrimination in Organisations. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 26(3), 197-210.
Lee, W.-Y., Kwak, D. H., Pedersen, C. L., & Miloch, K. S. (2011). Effects of Personality and Gender on Fantasy Sports Game Participation: The Moderating Role of Perceived Knowledge. J Gambl Stud, 427–441.
Maesam-T-AbdulRazak, Mohd Sofian, O.-F., & Abd-Latif, R. (2010). The Perspective of Arabic Muslim Women toward Sport Participation. Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Vol 1, No 2, 364-377.
Melnick, M. J., Sabo, D. F., & Vanfossen, B. (1992). Educational effects of interscholastic athletic participation on African-American and Hispanic youth. Adolescence, 295.
Morse, J. (1998). Designing funded qualitative research. strategies of qualitative researc, 56-85.
Mutara, E., & Chaka, I. (2007, March 8). Women and sports. The new Times.
Rao, N. S. (2010). Constraints of Indian women participation in games and sports. Br J Sports Med, 61-73.
Sever, C. (2005). Gender & Sport: Mainstreaming Gender in Sports Projects,. Helsinki: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
