"A Multivariate Analysis of Gender and Sports Participation Differences in Health Orientation among College Students"

Abstract

The present study, titled “A Multivariate Analysis of Gender and Sports Participation Differences in Health Orientation Among College Students,” explored how sports participation and gender influence health orientation across ten dimensions of the Health Orientation Scale (HOS). A total of 1,500 college students (sports = 810; non-sports = 690) participated in the study. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was applied to assess the main and interaction effects of Group (Sports vs. Non-Sports) and Gender (Male vs. Female). The MANOVA results indicated a highly significant main effect of Group (Wilks’ Λ = 0.240, F(10,1487) = 470.23, p < .001, η² = .760), showing that sports participants scored substantially higher across all HOS dimensions compared to non-sports participants. A small but significant main effect of Gender was also observed (Wilks’ Λ = 0.986, F(10,1487) = 2.16, p = .018, η² = .014), suggesting minor gender-based variations in health orientation. However, the Group × Gender interaction effect was non-significant (Wilks’ Λ = 0.994, F(10,1487) = 0.94, p = .499, η² = .006), indicating that the positive influence of sports participation on health orientation was consistent across both genders. The findings demonstrate that sports participation plays a crucial role in enhancing students’ health orientation, motivation, and preventive health behaviors, with gender exerting only a limited effect. Promoting sports engagement in higher education can thus serve as an effective strategy to foster holistic well-being among youth.