Über sozioökonomische Einflüsse und Sportausübung von Jugendlichen

Based on Bourdieu’s capital theory, this study uses data from the SOEP to empirically analyze which determinants affect young people’s choice of sport. The study differs from previous studies, that it does not examine a binary statement about favored sports, but rather includes the choice of a relevant alternative in the model. For example, the most popular sports for boys and girls, football and dancing, are included in the regression models as reference categories. It turns out, that the cultural capital of both, the young people themselves and their parents in particular, has a considerable influence on the choice of sport. In addition, economic capital also significantly changes the odds ratio of practicing another sport than the reference sport. In a second step, the covariates are not only assigned to Bourdieu’s types of capital for reasons of plausibility; this assignment is now supported by a statistical procedure, the multiple correspondence analysis. After the correspondence analysis, the new dimensions are used to further analyze the influence of the types of capital on the choice of sports. The results differ from the first empricial findings in that way, the social capital is now attributed much greater importance in the choice of sport. With the help of the allocation of the covariates using this statistical procedure, it is therefore possible to show that the isolated consideration of the types of capital can lead to imprecise conclusions. This article thus also provides an initial approach to identifying interdependencies between individual covariates and the types of capital themselves.