Measuring Sports’ Perceived Benefits and Aggression-Related Risks: Karate vs. Football

Abstract

Little is known about people’s perceived benefits and risks of sports, despite their role in shaping people’s intentions to engage in them. Here, we developed and tested a scale to measure perceived physical, emotional, cognitive, and social benefits as well as aggression-related risks of karate and football. Additionally, we compared these perceptions within and between these two sports, as well as among undergraduates with current/former participation in different types of physical activity (viz., martial artists, team sports players, participants in other types of physical activity, and non-participants). After a literature review, we created a 5-factor scale with 20 items administered to 184 undergraduates, along with questions about physical activity participation. After removing five items, confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure of the scale. Factor loadings and reliability indices were acceptable, though less than desirable results were found concerning the average variance extracted of all benefits dimensions and the reliability of the social benefits dimension. Analyses of variance showed that: (a) physical benefits were seen as the salient outcomes of karate and football, though martial artists perceived karate’s physical, emotional, and social benefits to the same extent; (b) in comparison to football, karate was perceived to bring more emotional and cognitive benefits and to entail less aggressiveness risks; (c) karate and football perceptions varied as a function of participant’s involvement in physical activity. This study presents a promising instrument to gather information on people’s perceptions about karate and football, which can be used to foster people’s engagement in them.

Examining karate and football perceptions and their links with athlete engagement and quality of life

“…Participants were 100 athletes practicing karate or football in Portugal. Sample size was defined with a priori power analysis using G * Power 3 [Version 3.1.9.6; ( 28 )], in which we specified: power = 80%, α = 0.05, analysis = repeated measures analysis of variance, and repeated-measures correlation = 0.40 [based on Limpo and Tadrist ( 11 )]. A minimum of 96 participants was suggested to detect small effects ( = 0.015), as reported by Limpo and Tadris ( 11 ).…”

“…Sample size was defined with a priori power analysis using G * Power 3 [Version 3.1.9.6; ( 28 )], in which we specified: power = 80%, α = 0.05, analysis = repeated measures analysis of variance, and repeated-measures correlation = 0.40 [based on Limpo and Tadrist ( 11 )]. A minimum of 96 participants was suggested to detect small effects ( = 0.015), as reported by Limpo and Tadris ( 11 ). No power analysis was performed for the moderated mediation analysis as confidence intervals were built through bootstrapping (sample set to 5,000).…”

“…We used the Portuguese Perceived Benefits and Aggressiveness Risks Scale (PBAR Scale), developed by Limpo and Tadrist ( 11 ). This is composed of five 3-item factors measuring perceived physical, emotional, social, and cognitive benefits along with perceived aggression-related risks in karate and football.…”

“…Recognizing the lack of multidimensional instruments for assessing sport perceptions, Limpo and Tadrist ( 11 ) developed a scale to measure perceived physical, emotional, cognitive, and social benefits as well as aggression-related risks in karate and football. Besides providing validity evidence on this instrument, authors reported three main findings.…”

“…This study had two major goals: (a) to examine whether perceived benefits and risks varied within and between sport (karate vs. football) and type of athlete (karateka vs. footballers); and (b) to test whether athletes' perceptions predicted engagement and QoL. Respectively, our hypotheses were as follows (a) based on Limpo and Tadrist ( 11 ), we expected karateka and footballers' perceptions about karate and football to be different, and (b) based on evidence from different settings showing perceptions-engagement ( 16 , 20 ), perceptions-QoL ( 24 , 25 ), and engagement-QoL links ( 27 ), we hypothesized that athletes perceiving more benefits and less risks in their sport would report more engagement, and, in turn, better QoL. By focusing on two types of athletes, we were able to ascertain whether this link was sport-general or sport-specific.…”