More than sports? A study of Norwegians’ opinions on sports’ social and political responsibilities

Figures & data

Table 1. Summary of hypotheses/assumptions.

H1. A high proportion of the population think that sports should take socio-political responsibilities.

H2. People are more inclined to think so (H1) for personal-relational problems than more political-structural and controversial issues.

H3. Those affiliated with sports will be more motivated than others to claim that sports should take responsibilities with respect to close-to-sports-issues.

H4. Those with collective leftist orientations should be positive and those with libertarian-populist orientation should be negative towards sports taking sociopolitical responsibilities.

H5. Voters for left-radical parties are most favourable for sports involvement in problems linked to classic leftist issue. Right libertarian political orientations have the opposite effect.

H6. Women are more concerned with sports’ sociopolitical responsibilities, especially gender issues.

H7: The overall effect of age is small for opinions on sports’ socio-political role.

H8: People with higher education will ask for sports to take socio-political responsibility.

H9: For disabilities I expect a medium-high concern without clear social distinctions in interest.

H10. Doping is an issue where sports organisations should take responsibility, but the issue is not socially distinctive.

Table 2. “How important do you think various issues should be for NIF and Norwegian sport clubs?”. Percentages. N = From 1082 to 1096.

Issues:	Not important	Somewhat important	Neither nor	Rather important	Very important
Public health	0.2	0.9	4.4	28.1	66.5
Racism	1.5	2.9	6.8	25.2	63.6
Environment	0.8	3.2	13.2	35.4	47.3
Disabled	0.2	0.8	5.8	29.0	64.3
Gender	0.7	2.0	8.5	23.1	65.7
Immigration	1.3	1.5	7.5	27.4	62.4
Doping	0.4	0.4	4.3	15.2	79.7
Local community	0.3	0.5	6.0	29.7	63.5
Economic inequality	0.1	0.6	3.3	19.2	76.7
Sexual orientation	0.6	1.8	5.6	19.2	72.7

Table 3. Independent variables.

	Range/%	Mean	SD	N
Female	0:1	0.51		1123
Age	18:79	52.3	16.3	1122
Education, years of	0:30	14.5	4.2	1117
Affiliation to sports, either or	0:1	0.18		1119
Political party voting:				883
Labour party	20.5
Progress party	6.4
Conservative party	23.1
Christian party	2.7
Green party	4.2
Red	1.9
Centre party	8.6
Socialist party	6.0
Liberal party	3.4
Others	1.3
No answer	21.9

Table 4. OLS-regression. Dependent variable; Index 0-10. How many problem-issues do each person see as “very important” (see Figure 1). Coefficients (standard errors). *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Independent variables:	Regression coefficients	Standard errors
Female	1.456***	(.212)
Age	−.005	(.007)
Education	−.036	(.026)
Involved in Sport	.061	(.270)
Party: Progress	−1.902***	(.444)
Party: Conservative	−.513	(.277)
Party: Christian	.572	(.586)
Party: Green	−.306	(.502)
Party: Communist	−.629	(.701)
Party: Centre	−.807*	(.372)
Party: Socialist	.118	(.422)
Party: Liberal	−.368	(.517)
Party: Others	−.795	(.832)
Constant	7.222***	(.648)
Observations	795
R2	0.101
Adjusted R2	0.086
Residual Std. Error	2.904	(df = 781)
F Statistic	6.765***	(df = 13; 781)

Index: 0-10. How many problem-issues do each person see as “very important” (see Figure 1). Coefficients and (standard errors). *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Figure 1. Index showing how many problem-issues each respondent report as “very important”. N = 1082 to 1096.

Figure 2. Percentage reporting each problem-issue as ‘very important’. N = 1082 to 1096.

Figure 3. Regression coefficients (AME) for (a) gender and (b) sports affiliation for each of sports political issue. Dots are values for AME regression coefficient, dotted lines indiate two standard deviations distance from regression coefficient values.

Figure 4. Regression coefficients (AME) for (a) Socialist Party, (b) Centre Party and (c) Progress Party for each of sports political issue. Dots are values for AME regression coefficient, lines indiate two standard deviations distance from regression values.

Table A1. Logistic regression. Dependent variable: “How important do you think that various issues should be for NIF and Norwegian sports clubs?” Respondents say this is “very important” versus those with other answers. Coefficients and standard errors. *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Independent variables:	Health	Racism	Environment	Disabled	Gender	Immigration	Doping	Community	Economic equality	Sexual orientation
Female	0.29*	0.79***	0.61***	0.95***	0.94***	0.76***	0.85***	0.53***	0.86***	0.80***
	(0.16)	(0.16)	(0.15)	(0.15)	(0.16)	(0.15)	(0.19)	(0.15)	(0.18)	(0.17)
Age	−0.01*	−0.01*	0.01*	0.005	−0.01	−0.01*	0.02***	−0.01	−0.01	−0.005
	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.005)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Education	0.05***	0.01	−0.01	−0.02	−0.04**	0.01	−0.03	−0.03*	−0.05**	−0.07***
	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)
Sport affiliation	0.60***	0.03	−0.19	−0.18	−0.08	0.05	−0.15	0.53***	−0.01	−0.03
	(0.22)	(0.20)	(0.19)	(0.19)	(0.20)	(0.20)	(0.23)	(0.20)	(0.22)	(0.21)
Progress Party	−0.50*	−1.39***	−0.72**	−0.28	−0.64**	−1.56***	−0.70**	−0.63**	−0.50	−1.51***
	(0.30)	(0.32)	(0.31)	(0.30)	(0.30)	(0.32)	(0.34)	(0.29)	(0.34)	(0.32)
Conservative Party	−0.08	−0.29	−0.15	−0.27	−0.32	−0.32	0.05	−0.36*	−0.44*	−0.53**
	(0.20)	(0.20)	(0.19)	(0.20)	(0.21)	(0.20)	(0.26)	(0.20)	(0.23)	(0.23)
Christian Party	0.14	1.05*	0.42	0.55	−0.43	0.60	14.90	0.34	−0.36	−0.69
	(0.45)	(0.57)	(0.42)	(0.49)	(0.42)	(0.49)	(436.20)	(0.47)	(0.48)	(0.45)
Green Party	0.003	−0.03	0.32	−0.02	−0.01	−0.18	−0.79**	−0.74**	−0.10	−0.63*
	(0.39)	(0.37)	(0.35)	(0.37)	(0.37)	(0.36)	(0.39)	(0.35)	(0.43)	(0.38)
Red	−0.96**	0.32	0.32	−0.56	0.32	0.13	−0.13	−1.04**	−0.56	0.06
	(0.46)	(0.54)	(0.47)	(0.48)	(0.55)	(0.51)	(0.60)	(0.46)	(0.53)	(0.59)
Centre Party	−0.03	−0.67**	−0.42*	−0.32	−0.58**	−0.53**	0.04	−0.26	−0.14	−0.76**
	(0.27)	(0.26)	(0.26)	(0.27)	(0.27)	(0.26)	(0.35)	(0.27)	(0.33)	(0.30)
Socialist Party	0.28	0.35	0.29	0.12	−0.29	0.16	−0.31	−0.41	0.37	−0.06
	(0.34)	(0.34)	(0.29)	(0.32)	(0.31)	(0.32)	(0.36)	(0.30)	(0.42)	(0.37)
Liberal Party	−0.47	0.20	0.15	−0.74**	0.04	0.27	−0.36	−0.54	−0.29	−0.04
	(0.38)	(0.42)	(0.36)	(0.37)	(0.41)	(0.42)	(0.44)	(0.37)	(0.45)	(0.47)
Others	−0.23	−0.93	−0.25	0.21	−0.31	−0.73	0.29	−0.63	−1.26**	−1.27**
	(0.59)	(0.59)	(0.57)	(0.63)	(0.59)	(0.56)	(0.81)	(0.57)	(0.58)	(0.58)
Constant	0.43	0.89*	−0.54	0.41	1.42***	0.72	0.86	1.34***	2.22***	2.47***
	(0.47)	(0.48)	(0.44)	(0.47)	(0.49)	(0.47)	(0.58)	(0.47)	(0.57)	(0.56)
Observations	845	843	839	848	851	851	849	851	847	843
Log Likelihood	−506.07	−502.57	−560.12	−519.11	−514.65	−520.05	−372.71	−534.23	−419.63	−450.23
Akaike Inf. Crit.	1,040.2	1,033.1	1,148.3	1,066.2	1,057.3	1,068.1	773.4	1,096.5	867.3	928.5
Pseudo R2 (McFadden)	0.04	0.08	0.04	0.05	0.05	0.07	0.07	0.03	0.05	0.07