Professor of Sociology and SSI Research Chair Chris Knoester was recently featured in an OSU College of Arts & Sciences “Voices of Excellence” podcast, describing his research focus transition from family sociology to sport sociology. This has involved the design and use of the SSI-supported National Sports and Society Survey and inquiries into sports-related public opinions that have broader cultural resonance, such as attitudes about athletes protesting during the national anthem, the appropriateness of tackle football for kids, multiculturalism in sport, and the nationalistic, patriotic, militaristic, and capitalistic messaging in sport.

Most recently, Knoester has been analyzing sex/gender systems in sports and society and how sports offer opportunities to teach lessons about sex and gender as well as challenge and potentially change dominant assumptions of what sex and gender mean and entail. This work has centered on attitudes and messaging about transgender athletes’ rights, the rights of nonbinary athletes, the practice of sex testing in sports, and gender segregation in youth sports. It also relied upon NSASS data.

He summarized this research for Psypost and recently extended it while offering insights and critiques about the connections between sex discrimination, Title IX, and transgender athlete controversies in The Society Pages.

Earlier this year, Knoester employed October, 2016 nationally representative data from the Taking America’s Pulse 2016 Class Survey to better understand how social structure and culture encouraged people to trust Donald Trump and vote for him in the 2016 presidential election that he won. This work contained a sports and society element as it considered the relevance and use of culture wars surrounding athlete protests during the national anthem, the awarding of participation trophies, and the allowance of full body contact in youth sports in encouraging people to trust and vote for Trump—and further identifying who might do so and why. Knoester also summarized this research and its relevance for Psypost.

Knoester, and the Sports and Society Initiative, continue to remain interested in the intersections of sports and society and why they matter. This includes how sport reflects and contributes to cultural and political dynamics.