Undergraduate research teams wows the big leagues

It’s the research equivalent of hitting one out of the park. Clark undergraduate researchers made history recently when their research on “Middle School Children and Organized Sports: Current Controversies” became the first undergraduate student-run symposium ever presented at the prestigious Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) conference, held in Minneapolis from April 18 to 22. The SRCD conference is the launching pad for the nation’s major research findings affecting children, families, and public policy.

Under the mentorship of psychology professors Jamie McHale and Penny Vinden, Loren Bush ’02, Derek Richer ’02, David Shaw ’02, and Brienne Smith ’01 have spent the last two years researching whether involvement in organized sports is good for middle-school boys and girls. Their findings included examining the effect of sports participation on self-esteem, leadership, aggressive behavior, delinquency and drug use. 

Submissions to the SRCD conference undergo a rigorous peer-review process by the field’s leading scientists, who are blind to the identity of the submitters and instructed to reject as many submissions as they accept.

“The reviewers had no idea they were evaluating the work of undergraduates. This research could have been submitted by the leading experts in the field. That’s what makes their achievement so monumental,” says McHale.

“When we were at the conference, it was just amazing to me that our project was considered as high quality as the work that expert psychologists have been doing for the last 30 to 40 years,” says Bush, who served as chair of the group’s symposium at the conference. “Many psychologists asked us for summaries of our findings so they could discuss our study in their classes and cite our research in their papers. It was an eye-opener to me that we might soon see our study referenced in someone else’s work.”

Breaking new ground

The idea for a study about children and sports grew out of a conversation between Bush, then a first-year student, and McHale after a psychology class in the fall of 1998.

“Most of the research in this area had been done with high-school age kids or young adults. There was very little about the u- to 14-age-group,” says McHale. “When Loren said he wanted to do a study about kids and sports, we realized that this was an opportunity to break some new ground.”

The two quickly recruited three other students — all of whom had been involved with sports themselves — and Professor Penny Vinden to “add a female perspective,’” as she puts it.

“The six of us have been in on this together from the beginning,” explains Smith. They spent a semester poring over all the existing literature, then adapting survey instruments for the middle·school age group and “eating a lot of pizza over at Jamie’s,” Smith adds. The team covered a breadth of issues, including the effect role models can have on children’s sporting involvement and self-esteem; the relationship between playing sports and aggressive behavior; sports and drug use; and sports involvement and self-esteem for girls.

To gather data, the students approached Worcester-area middle schools for their sample — a multicultural group of more than 400 kids — and enlisted the help of the schools’ physical education teachers.

“When we were setting up the assessments, we were also trying to think of ways to involve more Clark students in learning about our neighbors in Main South,” says Shaw. The research team recruited and trained more than 50 undergraduates to help conduct one-on-one interviews with children in the Main South middle schools. After spending this past year studying at the London School of Economics, Shaw has a deeper appreciation for his participation in this unique research endeavor.

“I can’t imagine that any other school could provide the environment or the faculty to pull off what we did,” he says. 

Against all odds

McHale is still in awe of the recognition the students and their study have received.

“This achievement is simply unprecedented,” says McHale. “I didn’t give my first read paper at a conference like this until I was in my third year as a faculty member.”

Perhaps the greatest honor for the Clark team was being awarded a prime spot to present the symposium on their research — an honor given to only 10 percent of the conference’s presenters. At a symposium, each of the team members gives a short talk summarizing his or her main research findings.

“At the conference we were approached by a few other research teams who asked us to collaborate with them, so that we can present a more extensive symposium at a conference on adolescence next year in New Orleans,” says McHale.

According to Bush, “This had to be the biggest compliment we received. These researchers have been working on this topic for more than 10 years, and they actually looked to us for help in advancing the field.”

For all the pride McHale and Vinden have for these student researchers, the students have equal admiration and respect for them.

“This project — and making it to the conference — would not have been possible without Penny and Jamie,” says Bush. “They have both put so much time into this project. All of us consider them our mentors and our friends.”