The effects of three Israeli sports programs on attitudes of Arabs and Jews toward one another

The purpose of this paper is to fill in a gap in the research literature on the subject of evaluation of coexistence programs.

Three separate research studies on the effects of joint sports programs on attitudes of Arabs and Jews toward each other were conducted from September 2011 to June 2012. Pretests and posttests were administered to participants in three sports programs involving Arabs and Jews: The Friendship Games, Mifalot's.

While pretests suggest that a great deal of hatred and lack of trust exists among Palestinians, Jordanians, and Israelis, according to the posttest results, by simply playing sports together, feelings of hatred can be greatly reduced and feelings of trust can be enhanced.

The research limitations included the need to shorten the questionnaire in order to encourage the youth to complete it, and the lack of control groups for the Friendship Games and Peres Center studies. More research is needed on this topic, as well as qualitative research to gain more insight into attitude changes.

The most important practical implication of the research is that conflict mitigation through sports programs and activities should be expanded in order to reach more people. The positive attitude changes found as a result of participation in the programs indicates that these joint sports programs really can promote better relations and if they are expanded to reach more people, the effects will be greater.

The originality/value of this study is great, as there has been almost no prior research which actually measured the effects on attitudes of youth of participation in integrated sports programs with Arabs and Jews.