WHY CHILDREN DROP OUT OF SPORT DURING SCHOOL?

Why children drop out of sport during school?

Why children drop out of sport during school?

Abstract

A growing body of literature supports the health benefits of physical activity in young people. Low levels of physical activity are thought to be partially responsible for the growing obesity epidemic among U.S. youth. The early adoption of a physically active lifestyle, including sports program participation, may carry over from youth to adulthood W.C. Taylor, S.N. Blair and S.S. Cummings et al., Childhood and adolescent physical activity patterns and adult physical activity. Thereby providing long-term health benefits. In the United States, approximately 80% of a child's physical activity occurs outside of physical education classes . Participation in youth sports programs offers children a potential means of obtaining recommended levels of physical activity . In addition, sports program participation has been associated with mental health benefits and reduced health risk behaviors.

Given these benefits, it is important to understand why some children participate in sports programs while others drop out. Previous work used the Participation Motivation Questionnaire (PMQ) to identify why children and adolescents participated in sports programs. That study and others have been conducted using a wide age range of male and female students (7-25 years). Few studies have examined the reasons for attrition from youth sports programs [19], [20] and [21]. Sports program participation motivation may differ between genders and with age. Therefore, it is important to understand the gender- and age-specific motivational factors of children to improve sports program participation. The importance of studying these factors relies on the assumption that sports program participants are more active than those that are not participating. Therefore, the associations between sports program participation and physical activity need to also be identified.

The purposes of this study were to identify, in middle school students, 1) gender-specific sports program participation and attrition factors and 2) the relationship between sports program participation and physical activity.

Introduction

Organized sport plays an important role in the development of today's children and youth. With millions of children worldwide participating in community, school, and privately run sports programs (Knop, 1996), the physical and psychosocial benefits of sport involvement are well recognized (Thomas, 2005). However, as many as two-thirds of participants aged 7-18 withdraw from sport each year, with attrition rates being particularly high during adolescence (Petlichkoff, 1996). Consequentially, sport psychology researchers have identified youth sport dropout as an area of concern (Gould. 1982).

Literature Review

Motivation

Much of the youth sport dropout research has been framed within motivation theories, with most commonly cited reasons for withdrawal including conflicts of interest, and negative experiences such as lack of fun, coach conflicts, and lack of playing time (see Weiss and Williams, 2004 for a review). However, it has been suggested (Lindner et al., 1991) that reasons such as these obtained through questionnaire data are intuitive, superficial, and subjective in nature, and that studies should focus instead on why youth have other interests, and why youth are no longer having ...