Fairness and enjoyment in school sponsored youth sports.

The purpose of this study was to expand upon research in organizational justice by introducing the construct into a school sponsored sports setting from a sociological perspective. Three dimensions of organizational justice — distributive justice, procedural justice, and interpersonal justice — were assessed to determine if the fairness of coaches, as perceived by their student athletes (N = 259), was associated with the sports the students' enjoyed participating in the most or the least. Two research questions answered by this study were: 1) do fairness perceptions differ between the sport the students enjoy the most and the sport they enjoy the least, and 2) did those perceptions influence the students' desire to continue participating in those referent sports. The findings indicted that perceptions of each of the three dimensions differed between the referent sports selected by the student athletes, and those differences were significant (p < .001). The findings also suggested that a linear relationshi...