Introduction

Contemporary sport is characterized by interpersonal violence, not only during games or competition but also during practice (e.g., Constandt et al., 2024). Sport's actors accepted this violence (e.g., Marsollier et al., 2024; Marsollier & Hauw, 2022; Stirling & Kerr, 2017) and created de facto a norm of violence (e.g., Fournier et al., 2022). However, interpersonal violence has been conceptualized at an individual level and not at a sports' club level (e.g., Fournier et al., 2022). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine if interpersonal violence should be conceptualized at as a sports club norm, depending on the practice level and to highlight the risk factor associated to this violence.

Method

A total of 1191 athletes (Mage = 31.4, SDage = 15.4 years, 54.2% male) belonging to 136 different sports clubs, completed a French translation of the Interpersonal Violence in Sport (Vertommen et al., 2016) A dichotomous score was created with 0 indicating experienced no violence and 1 indicating experienced at least one type of interpersonal violence (IV). Generalized linear mixt models were perform with IV in dependent variable and sex, age category, hours of practice, type of sport, level of practice, club's size as covariable at individual- and club-level.

Results

The omnibus tests for fixed effects indicated significant results. The intercept was significant (Estimate = 0.366, OR = 1.44, 99%OR 1.11 – 1.87, p < 0.001), suggesting that being a member of a particular club increases the odds of experiencing IV by 44% compared to being a member of another club. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), indicating that 18.1% of the total variance of experiencing IV can be attributed to differences between clubs. Significant predictors of IV were age, level of practice, and type of sport. Substantial variability was observed across clubs. The ICC indicated that66.6 % of the total variance of experiencing IV was attributed to club which highlights a strong clustering effect of club membership on experiencing IV.

Discussion

The present study reveals that the club to which an athlete belongs has a notable impact on the likelihood of experienced interpersonal violence. While only 33.3% of the variance of experiencing IV attributed to individuals' differences, this study is another stone to describe and understand IV as collective phenomena or norm shared by each sports club member. Based on the present result, the contextual effect on the IV needs to be inquired in future research.

Bibliography

Constandt, B., Vertommen, T., Cox, L., Kavanagh, E., Kumar, B. P., Pankowiak, A., Parent, S., & Woessner, M. (202 4). Quid interpersonal violence in the sport integrity literature? A scoping review. Sport in Society, 27(1), 162–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2023.2233433

Fournier, C., Parent, S., & Paradis, H. (2022). The relationship between psychological violence by coaches and conformity of young athletes to the sport ethic norms. European Journal for Sport and Society, 19(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2021.1878436

Marsollier, É., Hauw, D., & Von Roten, F. C. (2024). Acceptable or Not: An In-depth Analysis of Adolescent Competitive Athletes' Perceptions on Abusive Coaching Behaviors. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 08862605241303958. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605241303958