Participants in Behavior-Analytic Sports Studies: Can Anybody Play?

Participating in athletics confers a wide range of benefits, regardless of participants' gender or disability status. Our review of 95 behavior-analytic sports-performance articles revealed that over half of them included at least 1 female participant, but only 5 included at least 1 participant with a reported developmental disability. Given that females are often underrepresented as research participants, and that female athletes face unique barriers, it is heartening that so many articles involved female participants. Moreover, there were more female than male participants overall. However, it is surprising and distressing that so few articles involved participants with a developmental disability. Participating in sports can be a lifelong source of fitness, friends, and fun. Practitioners should encourage people of all ages, races, and genders, and from all disability categories, to find a sport they like, to learn to do it well enough to enjoy it, and to do it regularly. Researchers should give them the tools necessary to make those efforts as easy, and as fruitful, as possible. Nothing but good can come from these efforts.