Regular physical activity from an early age is an important part of a healthy life because if we incorporate exercise early into our lifestyle, we are more likely to maintain our commitment to sport into adulthood and even throughout our lives. In our research, we used the PERSIST 2019 database, which contains data from students at higher education institutions in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and Serbia. We used factor analysis to isolate four sports motivation factors (intrinsic, introjected, extrinsic, and amotivation). Factors influencing the different types were measured using linear regression analysis, involving the variables in four models. The results show that the effects of the sociodemographic variables are significant for gender, country, and mother’s job, especially in terms of intrinsic, introjected, and extrinsic motivation. The role of coping is salient for health awareness factors, with a positive effect on intrinsic motivation and a negative effect on the other types. The impacts of quality of education and support are typically negative, while the positive effect of satisfaction with infrastructure is noteworthy. The effect of persistence in sport on intrinsic and introjected motivation is positive. Frequency of training increases intrinsic motivation, while practical sport embeddedness generates extrinsic motivation. In terms of relationships, a mainly teacher-oriented network within the institution typically has a negative effect on intrinsic motivation, while peer relationships outside the institution typically increase intrinsic and extrinsic sport motivation. Academic persistence has a positive effect on intrinsic motivation and a negative effect on introjected motivation. Our research highlights the complexity of factors influencing sport motivation and the role of coping, which typically remains strong when relationship-related variables are included. In addition, we must emphasise the dominant role of relationship network patterns, which may even reduce commitment to sport.

The pandemic caused a new digital scheme of work to be implemented in higher educational institutes to avoid physical contact, which is referred to as emergency remote teaching in the literature (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020). The inevitable consequence of emergency remote teaching (later on ERT) was that the students’ inter-and extra organisational relationships decreased significantly (Pusztai & Győri, 2021). Based on the results of previous studies, we know that the lack of student relationships is strongly related to ineffectiveness (Astin, 1993; Pusztai, 2015; Tinto, 1975), which was also identified during the period of ERT (Pusztai & Győri, 2021). In the current study, firstly, we hypothesised that the students’ social interactions, which were accomplished by video gaming, could compensate for isolation (Pisan, 2007) and improve their effectiveness. Secondly, we hypothesised that video gaming might prove ineffective due to stressful and uncertain periods as well as avoidance of activity. In our study, we applied database analysis (Learning Alone database, N = 677) and half-structured interviews (N = 19). In the quantitative sample, we identified that increased gaming time (compared to the time spent before the pandemic) was related to persistence reduction, whereas similar results were obtained with the reduced playing time. In addition, the interview participants reinforced that they used video gaming as a tool to maintain their relationships during ERT, and they tended to do so in their relationships with other students as well. Thus it can be said that video gaming is an extracurricular activity that could affect academic effectiveness positively and negatively at the same time.

We examined athletes’ territorial behavior and aggression and their relationship with resilience. The sample consists of 116, mainly amateur athletes. Our results show a significant positive relationship between territorial need and aggression but only in 'non-material territorial need' from the territorial subscales. Furthermore, we found no significant difference in the relationship between territorial need and aggression comparing individual and team athletes. Resilience was a non-significant mediator between territorial need and aggression. The results may provide helpful information for practitioner specialists and researchers in the applied field, as they both support previous research and attempt to address a new research topic.