Sports law: Essential content areas for the undergraduate physical education curriculum

The purpose of this study was to identify those content areas relating to legal issues in sport which should be taught in the undergraduate physical education curriculum.; A sample of 454 was selected by systematic sample from the September 1990 National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) membership list (n = 379) and the entire membership of the March 1990 National Association for Girls and Women in Sport (NAGWS) Joint Committee on Legal Issues Resource List (n = 75). A total of 403 persons returned questionnaires, a response rate of 91.2%.; The instrument consisted of eight dependent variables (administrative law, constitutional law, contract law, judicial system, legal research, products liability law, risk management, and tort law) and four independent variables (education, employment, gender, and race). Responses to the dependent variables were recorded on a five-point scale and to the independent variables by checking the appropriate box or filling in a blank.; A chi-square test of association was performed to determine if there was a significant difference between the various demographic groupings. Means and standard deviations were computed to rank the dependent variables. Multiple discriminant analyses were performed to determine the relative importance of each of the dependent variables in discriminating between the different groups in the sample. Stepwise discriminant analyses were performed to determine the relative value of the dependent variables in discriminating between/among the demographic groups. Published appellate cases decided in 1989 were analyzed and categorized according to the eight dependent variables.; Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions appear justified: (1) A sports law course should be required for undergraduate physical education majors. (2) Of the eight content areas, products liability, risk management, and tort law seem to be the most important and the judicial system and legal research the least. (3) The levels of expertise, gender, areas of employment, and education of NASPE and NAGWS members do not seem to affect their perceptions in most of the content areas. (4) The ethnic/racial background of NAGWS and NASPE members does not seem to affect their perceptions of the content areas.