The „typical“ athlete image: A correlative sport media use and involvement study Jörg Hagenah

1. The „typical“ athlete image: A correlative sport media use and involvement studyJörg Hagenah Introduction Thiel (1991) presented in a representative survey the perceived characteristics of the "typical" athlete. According to this sportsmen were supposed to be optimistic, interesting, cosmopolitan, merry and social dare-devils, who seem to be straightforward and in love with life. During the last decade the field of sports in Germany had changed. For example special-interest-channels like Eurosport (end of the 80's) and DSF (1993) have been established on the TV-market and beside the very popular football other sports like Formula 1, cycling and ski-jumping moved over into the focus of interest. Therefore were are interested how far the sport image is affected by these changes. In the present study 354 subjects (47.2% female) completed a questionnaire, which contains 17 item pairs (i.e. boring-interesting). Additionally responses regarded media use and the interest in sport-programmes. In a first step temporal athlete image changes will be analysed. In a second step the relevancy of the total mean value as the index for one true typical athlete image will be verified. Therefore it is necessary to check by cluster analysis how far the probands receive different athlete images. Results Tab 1. In comparison to the image profile of 1991 typical athlete characteristics (total mean values) seem to be constant over time, but sportsmen are no longer seen as dare-devils these days. Thiel (1991) could not find any image differences between sport fans and people who are not interested in TV-sports. But as the result of a cluster analysis following three images can be shown: P < 0.001 P < 0.001 P < 0.01 P < 0.001 P < 0.05 Fig 1. Image cluster in correlation to the involvement in sport programmes (five subscales calculated by factor analysis) bold = important items; * = p < 0,05; ** = p < 0,01; *** = p < 0,01 Discussion The highest image effects correlate with the involvement in TV-sports. For that purpose the probands rated their interest in 23 various sport programmes. By factor analysis five subscales could be calculated (Fig.1). General sport fans are exceptionally high involved. The involvement effects are especially significant in comparison to the third group. But an involvement effect between the two fan groups (p<.05) can be shown by a factor which includes items like ”ski-jumping presented by public channels”. An one way ANOVA analysis indicates the largest sport media effects in using TV. Subjects with a sport resentment (Cluster 3) spend the least time (F (1, 308)=4.77; p<.01) with watching sports in TV (M=1.56 h/week), SD=3,07) in comparison to critical sport fans (Cluster 1; M=3.36 h/week, SD=4,94). Additionally this group includes more low level user of TV in general (F (1, 305)=5.08; p<.01). The reading of sport-related articles in the newspapers shows no group effects, even if the first two groups prefer reading sport magazines. As the base of a longitudinal study can be shown that several athlete images exist correlating to sport media use and sport involvement. Questionable is how far athlete image and sport involvement are affected by media use and general sport media changes. References Thiel E. Sport und Sportler – Image und Marktwert: Einsatzmöglichkeiten im Marketing, 1991. hagena@rz.uni-leipzig.de Druck: Universitätsrechenzentrum Leipzig