Correlations between Civil Organisation Activity and Sporting Activity in the 15 to 18 Age Cohort

Several studies pointed out the positive effects of social capital in the last 10 to 20 years. Never­ theless, only minor emphasis was put on the formation of social capital. Most authors implicitly presume an effect of socialisation in the background of the formation of social capital. This is also confirmed by studies, using data of panel research, which have demonstrated significant connections between the civil activity of young people and adults and their general level of trust. In our study we examine how membership in civil organisations – which we consider an import­ ant indicator of social capital – is influenced by sporting activity in the age range of 15–18. The two surweys examined (Ifjúságkutatás 2000, 2008) show that young people practising sports are more likely to participate in the work of civil organisations, moreover, sport proved to be a more important background variable in our models than the access to economic and cultural resources. Although this is also due to structural reasons, we are convinced that the most important factors for social capital are the participation in a community and the social net deriving from it. And juvenile sporting activity can serve as a good basis for this.


Introduction
In the last decade social capital has become one of the (political) sociological ex pressions referred to most often in international scientific literature.Although the history of social capital as a technical term reaches far back in time, its real success story started during the last twenty years, mainly due to the works of coleman (1990) and even more to those of PuTnam (1993PuTnam ( , 2000; see also FüZér et al. 2005).Putnam considered civil commitment, social networks, general trust and common norms (factors of social capital) as the basic patterns of good governance and effect ive decisionmaking.Accordingly, social capital is positively linked to economic development on a community and social level (Woolcock & radin 2008), but on an individual level it offers good protection against many negative effects as well (FursTenBerg & HugHes 1995), although, of course, certain negative implications cannot be excluded (coleman 1988, 1990;PorTes 1998).In the background of the formation of social capital most authors presume an implicit effect of socialisation (sTolle & HoogHe 2004), but these mechanisms are not completely unraveled.As we will present it in more detail in the theoretical part of our study, civil participa tion of youth, or the general trust of youth, is highly correlated with the level of civil activity and general trust in later years.Several research results imply that sport has a variety of positive effects on physical/mental health (Bar-or & BaranoWski 1994;Hamar et al. 2009).In our study we try to answer the question whether sport ing activity has a connection to civil participation, an important indicator of social capital.In the theoretical part, we briefly summarise the scientific results related to the aspects of socialisation of social capital theories, or rather the other cornerstone of our research, the results regarding the willingness of young Hungarians to engage in physical activity.In our analysis we undertake to reveal the connections between these two pillars on the grounds of two crosssectional studies about adolescents (15 to 18 age range).

The socialisation aspect of social capital
We shall start this chapter by a conceptual clarification.Social capital has various theoretical approaches. 1 To put it more simply, there are two main schools in this aspect.One is the macro approach (with the abovementioned Putnam or Fukuyama), the other is the micro approach (Lin, Erickson, Flap, van der Gaag etc.).Furthermore, there are many authors who are not unequivocally classifiable in these cat egories (for example Coleman or Bourdieu) -see more in Tardos (1996); lin (1999);orBán & sZánTó (2005); angelusZ (2010); kmeTTy (2012).In our study we use Putnam's macro approach which, in contrast with the micro approach, means that instead of analysing the network resources and the question of how easily they can be mobil ised, we put more emphasis on the civil and normative elements of social capital.This distinction also affects the selection of indicators.Putnam's theory measures the potency of social capital using variables like organisational membership, general trust and the extent of reciprocity.In our study we will concentrate on membership in civil organisations. 2  Research about youth socialisation pointed out that fundamental values and identities evolve already at a young age, and they hardly change later (saPiro 2004).The different activities practised by young people simultaneously give a socialisa tion framework for their future social participation.There are many possible ways of development of which we will highlight two at this time.On the one hand, youth activity (e.g.sport, participation in civil movements) can enlarge the wider social network, which can also create a kind of link to 'more distant' groups of society.These typically weak ties (granoveTTer 1973) may reduce prejudices and may lead to the rise of general trust; furthermore, they presume the acquisition of differ ent social norms (Hansen et al. 2003).On the other hand, important relationships might also form within the organisation, which can later function as social network 3 capital (for example, they might be helpful in a job search).Naturally, we also have to count with possible negative consequences, but they are less significant.Examin ing an American sample (young people of 16 to 18 years of age), Hansen and his 1 The next part is based on Tardos (1996) and kmeTTy (2012).

2
We only have indicators for this element of social capital.

3
As we have mentioned above, in our study we use the notion of social capital.However, in certain cases, the notion of relationship capital or network capital seems to be more adequate for the phenomena analysed.A typical example for this is when we analyse the chances of a person to get a job by means of their relationships, thus when it is the resource character of social capital that matters.sik (2012) analyses the correlation between relationship capital and social capital in detail and suggests the use of relationship capital instead of social capital which he considers much too fragmented and of a diffuse meaning.angelusZ (2010) comes to almost the same conclusion in his posthumous publication on social capital.We agree both with Sík and Angelusz on the anom alies perceived in connection with the conceptualisation of social capital.In cases where the resource character of social capital prevails, we apply the notion couple social/relationship capital as well.If, however, the normative element is important, we still have recourse to the use of the expression social capital.
SPORT AS A 'TOOL' OF SOCIALISATION EJMH 9:1, June 2014 colleagues (2003) observed that doing sporting activity in different organisational frames augmented selfrecognition, mental security, but it also had negative effects as participants had to carry out activities that they were reluctant to, or leaders en couraged them to perform actions they considered morally wrong.The relationship between sporting activity, civil organisational membership and general trust has not yet been in the focus of research.Nevertheless, researchers have dealt with the rela tionship between civil participation in youth and later civil activity.claiBorn and marTin (2000), after the analysis of American panel data, concluded that participa tion in civil movements during school years has no effect on the level of general trust and membership in civil organisations in adulthood.smiTH (1999) demonstrated that the access of youth to some components of social capital raises the likelihood of later political and civil activity.The author also stresses that in order to stop the impair ment of social capital it would be necessary to strengthen the institutions/organisa tions (religious and civil organisations) which have a positive impact on the social isation of youth from the aspect of social capital (the author makes reference here to the American situation).Smith's results were affirmed by the researches of sTolle and HoogHe (2004) who also examined the question using American panel data.According to their results, there is a strong link between civil activity at an early and at a later age.They also pointed out that these effects will most probably intensify as time goes by (sleeper effect).The link between the general level of trust measured in youth and at the age of 34 was even more intense than the relationship observed in connection with civil activity.They concluded that in order to understand the dis tribution of adult social capital it is worth returning to the youth and examining this question within their group.
Studies analysing the Hungarian context have also raised awareness to the so cialisation aspect of civil engagement.dávid and her coauthors (2008) examined the family patterns of civil participation in a smaller Hungarian settlement.Their re sults revealed that parents' participation in civil organisations significantly increases the probability that their children will also take part in the work of a civil organisa tion.Nevertheless, the authors themselves remark that the direction of correlation is not evident.It is also possible that it is the children's civil engagement that exerts an effect on the parents' involvement.The results, however, show unequivocally that civil participation is deeply embedded on a family level.

The effects of sport on youth
67% of adolescents aged 12 to 18 in Hungary do insufficient physical activity (asZmann 2000).That means they live an inactive life.This is also shown in a study on physical activity in the Hungarian society (mésZáros et al. 2002;TaTár 2004) which emphasises that sport consumption is not a regular part of the family need EJMH 9:1, June 2014 fulfilment process (HoFFmann 2000), but it remains the most important medium of the socialisation of young people (Bauer 2002). 4 Engaging in physical activity and doing sports, while being indispensable for the developing body, is extremely useful for several other reasons.On the one hand, it shapes young people's personality (Bar-or & BaranoWski 1994); on the other hand, regular physical activity and training, commenced at a young age, especially in adolescence (Hamar et al. 2009) improves selfrespect and makes the individual more self-confident than their inactive peers.As asZmann's (2000) large sample investigation points out, physically active young people consider inner values more important than their inactive peers, they form relationships more quickly, are less stressed and speak about problems and difficulties more easily.Hungarian research (PluHár et al. 2003(PluHár et al. , 2004;;asZmann 2000;kiss 2003) supports the view that phys ically active young people are more healthconscious, perform better and are health ier.Also, regular physical activity commenced at an early age becomes a lifestyle (isTvánFi 2004;vanreusel et al. 1997;Perkins et al. 2004) which has a positive effect in adulthood as well.

Hypotheses and methodology
The present study is based on the secondary analysis of two large sample surveys (Ifjúság 2000and Ifjúság 2008) conducted in 2000(laki et al. 2001) and 2008(sZa-Bó & Bauer 2009).The survey series, commenced in 2000, aims to examine the situation and problems of Hungarian youth in depth.The youth survey, based on a large sample, examined habits of spending free time, political preferences, media consumption and behaviour towards deviance amongst other things.From the three waves of the survey (2000,2004,2008) we use the data from 2000 and 2008.As the method ology of the 2000 youth survey corresponded to that of the 2008 survey, the results could be placed in a temporal dimension as well, aligned to the variables that were asked in both cases.Alongside the identical questionnaire parts, there were also thematic blocks in the surveys -in the 2008 survey the relationship to doing sports formed a separate block.Besides the demographic variables, we selected the questions referring to civil activity.We also used some of the questions of the detailed sporting block from the 2008 survey.The analysis focuses on the subsample of the Ifjúság 2000 and 2008 surveys of 15 to 18yearolds.The 15 to 18yearold subsample of the 2008 survey involved 2,018 people, while the survey in 2000 involved 1,780.
The relationship of the examined variables in our analysis was first tested using crosstables.As a second step, in order to obtain more reliable results, we applied logistic regression models on the civil activity dependent variables.As the operation alisation of the variables was not plausible in all cases, we will touch upon the exact process of it in our analysis.We proceed from the hypothesis that, among young people, sports and leisure time civil activities are the most common.We expect a positive relationship between doing sports and participation in youth civil activity.Sharpening this hypothesis, we also expect that sport will be the most de cisive motive in civil activity, stronger than the role of access to cultural and material resources.The examination of the relationship using two surveys makes the results more reliable, or rather provides an opportunity for a dynamic comparison.Our paper is based on the secondary analysis of the data of these two surveys.We focused on aspects at the level of target groups and crossrelationships previously not examined by researchers dealing with this topic.5

Youth 2000
In the research Ifjúság 2000 (laki et al. 2001) the incidence of sporting activity of the subsample of 15 to 18yearolds was measured using the following question: Do you practice sports regularly, do you do sports beside the obligatory PE lessons?43% of the sample responded that they practised sport.Among those students 40% practised sports regularly, the rest of them did physical activity only occasionally.The probability of doing sports was larger among young men who lived in better financial circumstances and children whose parents had a higher level of education.Other earlier studies led to the same results (Perényi 2010).
In our study, social capital was examined measuring the incidence of different organisational membership types.18% of young people had some kind of an organ isational relationship.This percentage is higher than the proportion of voluntarism in Hungarian society -but researches studying civil membership also show that the involvement of young people is above the average (BarTal 2010).Researches focusing on the organisations and the membership both characterise the Hungarian civil sector being sport and leisure timecentered (BarTal 2005).
Membership in leisure time and sports organisations was 6.6%, but the strong est affiliation was to religious organisations (the difference between the two propor tions is not significant).Accordingly, the 'mobilising' ability of religious organisa tions was relatively high in 2000 -this is especially interesting since the religion based motivation in voluntarism, as regards the whole society, was relatively low (BarTal & kmeTTy 2011a, 2011b).As for the nexus between civil membership and sporting activity, see Table 2. 11% of those who are not involved in some sort of sporting activity are members in some organisation, but among those who do sports, this proportion is 25%.The cor relation is significant (p < 0.000), nevertheless, the strength of the correlation based on the Cramer V index is weak (CV = 0.188).This result is modest on its own as there are similar background variables behind both the sporting activity and the civil member ship.The results are partly tautological since adolescents who do sports are in many cases obliged to enter the sports organisation they train in.If we separate sporting and leisure time activities from civil organisation membership, 13.1% of the analysed popu lation are members in some organisation.However, young people who do sports are overrepresented even in this narrowed participation dimension; 15.3% are members in a civil organisation which is not related to sports and leisure time (p < 0.02, CV = 0.06).
In the second part of our analysis we test the relationship with a multivariable statistical model.Since our dependent variable (membership in a civil organisation) is a binomial dummy variable, we used a logistic regression model.In our analysis we applied a hierarchical approach.As a first step, we measured the background im pact of demographic variables, then as a second step, we included the variable sport as well.As a third step, we used a narrowed sense of civil participation as a dependent variable where sporting and leisure time participations did not figure (see Table 3).
Although we were primarily concentrating on the effects of sport in our study, it is also worth to take a brief look at our basic model.The higher proportion of female participation is somewhat surprising since a slight majority of men in civil activity can be observed in the adult population (BarTal 2010), but the effect is not strong, the 'p' value is 0.038.Higher education level of the parents also indicates stronger civil commitment.Cultural patterns picked up at home certainly have great impact on whether a person volunteers in a civil organisation or not (see also dávid et al. 2008).Better subjective living standards have the same consequences as the higher educational level of parents; the better someone feels about their family's financial status, the more likely one is to participate in a civil activity.The influence of the type of settlement someone lives in is not strong, only small towns show a different effect on the general level of civil engagement.The odds ratio of the residents of small towns is only half of that of those living in villages.
We have kept religiosity for the end.The impact of this variable is the strong est on civil activity (this variable accounts for 40% of the explanatory power).The stronger one's religious engagement is, the more likely one is to become a member of a civil organisation.This effect is not surprising at all if we recall our table above which shows that young people linked to civil organisations by means of religious or ganisations are in the majority.The model explains 10.6% of the total variance.In the second phase we included our sports variable.The impact of the other variables did not change notably, solely the 'gender' effect disappeared from our model.Sporting activ ity appeared with an odds ratio above two, thus -excluding the influence of the other variables -the chance of a physically active person to become a member of a civil organisation is more than double of their peers' who are not involved in sports.The model's explanatory power has also increased significantly, almost to 15%.Although 1 was the best, 5 was the worst value (for living standards).Chance quotient below 1 means that the relatively better financial status increases the chance of civil participation.
*** 1: Not religious, 2: In his own way, 3: According to the instruction of the Church.
Logistic regression model based on civil membership 7 (hierarchical approach) -2000 7 We did not use the classical logistic regression model but a 'Generalised Linear Model' with a logistic estimative function.We used a robust estimative method to estimate the covariance matrix in order to diminish the chance of distortion originating from the multicollinearity of the variables.
regarding its influence, sporting activity is not the strongest indicator, it is second only to religiosity.This is in line with the fact that following affiliation to Church, sports and leisure time civil activity are the second most popular forms of civil participation.
In the third executing we omitted sports and leisure time membership from the dependent variable.Even in this case, sports figured in our model with an odds ratio over 1, which means that the over representation of young people who do sports in civil participation is not only due to sporting organisations but a mechanism of action can be observed even beyond that.However, the explanatory power within the model of the variable defining the fact of sporting fell back to a level of approximately 10%.

Youth 2008
According to the youth research Ifjúság 2008 (sZaBó & Bauer 2009), sporting activ ity has increased slightly during the time period between the two surveys: 48% of the children of the 15 to 18 age range were involved in some physical activity beside PE lessons.The background variables of sporting activity were on the whole similar to those of 2000; maybe it is worth highlighting that the proportion of active children in Budapest has diminished significantly while it has greatly increased in other regions.We do not intend to deal with the reasons behind this in the current paper, neverthe less, it is an important trend in sports psychology.Since a longer sportrelated ques tion block was used in one of the subsamples of the 2008 youth research, we have the chance to understand the background motivations behind sporting activity.The following table presents the background motivations for sporting activity (Table 4).Motivators are mainly health, fitness, happiness and feeling good.In respect of social capital, social factor (good company) is the most substantial; 25% of the sample considered that factor important.We will come back to that later during the analysis of the results connected to civil membership.
Compared to 2000, civil membership was analysed in a brand new conceptual framework.Twenty organisational types were listed in the survey, and there were 4 different answer options to all of them: formal member, participant in the work, visitor of events, not linked in any way to any such organisation.We summarised the results of civil engagement in the following table (Table 5).11% of the respondents answered that they were formal members of at least one organisation, 18% participated in the work of the organisations (without being a formal member), and another 7.1% were not strongly engaged but sometimes visited the events of the organisations.
According to the 2008 survey, young people principally participated in sports and leisure time organisations and different student organisations.Compared to 2000, religion-related organisational membership has decreased significantly, less than 1% were linked to organisations of the Church or other religious communities (Table 6).The difference regarding the attachment to religious organisations is so great that it must have some methodological explications (of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that there was indeed some decrease in the past period). 8As this paper does not focus on methodological matters, we do not examine this problem.This un doubtedly makes it more complicated to compare the two databases reliably.Validity also diminishes due to the fact that participation in civil organisations was divided into formal and informal participation.In 2000, membership was subject to exam ination; presumably, adolescents without formal relation to the organisation defined themselves as members as well.Regarding social capital, it is less important to be a formal member, as primarily it is the time spent in the organisation that counts, hence we have integrated formal members and the ones participating in the work of the organisations into one category.It is worth reexamining the relationship of civil activity and involvement in sports with a simple crosstable (Table 7).The relationship to the 2008 data is even stronger; 46% of the adolescents who practice sports is a member of some civil organisation or participates in the work of such an organisation, while the percentage for those not engaging in any sporting activity is only 15% (p > 0.000).There is a medium correlation between the two variables (CV = 0.36).If we do not take sports organisations into account in relation to civil organisation membership and participation, 20% of the examined population can be regarded as active from a civil aspect.Young people doing sports are over represented on this platform as well: 28% of them are active (p = 0.000).
As a next step we apply a logistic regression model to the 2008 civil activity 8 This is supported by the fact that the proportion of nonreligious people increased from 42% to 53% in the time period between 2000 and 2008 in the two samples.See also rosTa who claims that in Hungary, like in Poland, 'the nominal level of religious practices has decreased, but the number of those endorsing religious beliefs has increased' (2012, 100).
EJMH 9:1, June 2014 variable (as mentioned above, we have converted the variable into a binary one).The results are represented in Table 8.The structure of Table 8 squares with Table 3.In the first executing we did not include the sporting variable.In the first and the second executing the dependent variable is activity in a civil organisation, while in the third it is a limited civil activity without participation in sports organisations.
The level of education of the parents and the subjective financial status, simi larly to the data of the 2000 survey, influenced civil participation in 2008 as well; the access to both cultural and economic resources has positive effects on this form of participation.The settlement type variable was not available for the 2008 data, so we substituted it with settlement size.If we compare the people living in villages or in the regional capital, the civil activity of the second group is higher; this is in contrast with our earlier results, but it should be stressed that the conceptual framework for civil activity is also different.As regards the affiliation to different civil organisa tions, we have already pointed out the significantly smaller proportion of religious organisations which predicted a diminution of the role of religion in our model.The importance of the religion indicator has sunk back to 0.23 as we had expected, and the setback is even more striking if we consider that the explanatory power of the model also decreased to 7%.However, the sports variable included in the second phase appeared in our model with a stronger impact than expected.The odds ratio of the sports variable has ascended to above four, which is almost the double of the result measured in 2000.With the inclusion of sport, the explanatory power of the model increased to over 20%.Among the indicators we have used, sport had the strongest correlation to civil activity.In our model analysing civil activity without sports organisations the odds ratio of sporting fell back to 2.5, but it still proved to be the strongest indicator in our model.That is, sporting raised the probability even of civil activity examined without sports organisations in both time periods.
As already mentioned, it is quite difficult to compare the two time periods due to the different conceptual elaboration of civil participation.In our last model we attempted to limit the selection of different types of civil activity in a way that the two databases may become comparable.Six organisation types that were included in both surveys could be identified: political party, political youth organisation, trade union, nonpolitical youth organisation, environmental organisation, student organ isation.Although religions or Churchrelated organisations were included in both surveys, we omitted them from the subsequent analyses due to the aforementioned methodical problems.The affiliation to sporting or leisure time organisations was not included in our restricted civil activity variable either.With this restriction, in the case of the 2000 data civil membership was 5.4%, and 12.5% in 2008. 9We omitted the settlement variable from our earlier models as well because of the difference in the query methods.Religious organisations, communities and different charity organisations were not included in the simplified civil organisation activity variable.Consequently, re ligiosity was not related to this civil activity dimension.Sporting activity, however, appeared in both models and proved to be the strongest factor.In the explanatory model of the last model's civil activity the gender effect seemed to be very strong.This is not surprising if we analyse the civil organisation forms that set up our nar rower civil activity variable -several organisation types of a strong political orien tation appear in it which attract men more even at a later age.The sports variable figured in our model in both years with an odds ratio over 2 which underpinned our hypothesis that sport, besides sporting organisation membership, encourages young people to join other civil organisations as well.

Summary
In our study we proceeded from the concept of social capital.Although not all of its types are favourable, social capital has a positive relationship with both democrat ic development and economic effectiveness.Therefore we consider it important to highlight the socialisation aspects of social capital formation.As we have mentioned in our references to other authors, civil membership and general trust at a young age determine the strength of the different social capital indicators in adulthood.On this basis, in our study we examined the background social variables that might influ ence juvenile civil activity.Unfortunately, the analysis framework did not allow us to include social capital indicators other than civil activity; we still believe that the results are relevant.Positive effects of sporting activity at a young age such as better selfesteem or a healthier lifestyle have already been manifested by many scientists.In our analysis we intended to complement these results by the presentation of their correlation to civil activity.The analysis of the 2000 and 2008 youth research sub samples of the 15 to 18 age cohort supported our preliminary hypothesis.Moreover, the relationships proved to be stronger than expected.In both the twodimensional and the multi-dimensional analyses, sport was significantly related to civil activity.This statement remained true even as we filtered civil work for sports organisations from civil activity.With the inclusion of sporting activity, the explanatory power of our models increased significantly in all dimensions, and this sports variable turned out to be the strongest in most cases.This strength of impact is even more interest ing considering that our models had been controlled beforehand based on the avail able indicators of cultural and economic resources.The models have also revealed why sports and leisure time civil organisations are the most popular in the adult cohorts -the first encounter with this type of organisation occurs at an early age, which presumably implies some kind of socialisation effect as well.An absolutely reliable comparison of the two time periods is not possible due to the different con ceptual frameworks.This is not necessarily a handicap; it can also be an advantage as sports seemed to be an important background factor in both conceptual frame works.The exact measurement of the effect strength is not possible; in any case, our aim was above all to reveal the correlations.
Although the main strand of our study did not focus on religion, it might be worth including some observations on that subject as well.Besides the sports factor, in the background of a certain kind of voluntary work, the connection to religious communities also seems to be important.On the basis of our study it cannot be de termined to what extent religion has an impact on civil engagement at a young age, but it is obvious that in certain segments it can have an important motivating power.It is no coincidence that coleman (1990) has included religiosity in the list of social capital indicators.The radical decrease in the proportion of religious people during the 8 years between the two queries will probably exert a negative influence on the strength of social capital in the forthcoming generations.There is no full consensus between social researchers in the question regarding which forms of civil organ isation favour economic development and the consolidation of democratic norms.
Bekkers and his colleagues (2008) underlined the 'merit' of civil organisations in spiring instrumental activity against expressive organisations.Doing sports primar ily increases the participation in expressive organisations.The presented research was based on crosssectional samples so we need to be careful when interpreting the results.In Hungary, the admission of young people in sports organisations can in many cases be seen as a 'constraint' -clubs oblige young people to join (as a legal guarantee for the collection of membership fees, for example).Consequently, a strong structural link can be detected between sporting activity and civil organisa tion membership within the young generation.But the influence of sports on civil activity can be judged strong even if we neglect sports organisations.In accordance with Putnam, we believe that it is not the nature of the task performed within the civil organisation that is the most substantial from the point of view of social capital but the participation in a community and the social network deriving from it.And for this, youth sporting activity is -possibly -a good basis.

Table 4
Reasons

Table 7
Sporting activity -civil activity -2008 (raw percentage) Table 9 shows the results.

Table 8
Logistic regression model based on civil membership (hierarchical approach) -2008

Table 9
Logistic regression model applied to a limited civil activity in the two periods