College Student Attendance at Sporting Events and the Relationship Between Sport Team Identification and Social Psychological Health

Abstract

Consistent with the Team Identification—Social Psychological Health Model (Wann, 2006a), past research indicates college students’ levels of identification with university teams is positively correlated with social psychological health. The current investigation was designed to examine how attendance may impact this relationship. The sample contained 148 college students who completed a questionnaire packet assessing identification with their school’s men’s basketball team, amount of attendance at the team’s games, and two measures of social well-being (loneliness and collective self-esteem). Regression analyses revealed that level of team identification (i.e., private involvement), but not attendance (i.e., public involvement), accounted for a significant proportion of unique variance in well-being. Therefore, it appears that private involvement with a college sport team is more strongly associated with college students’ social well-being than is public involvement.