Secondary School Students’ Participation in Sports and their Parents’ Level of Support: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Australia is a nation well known for its participation and involvement in international sporting events (Currie 2009). Community participation in sports and recreational activities has also been recognised as an important feature of the Australian way of life (Independent Sport Panel 2009). Yet concern has been increasingly expressed at the decline in young people's participation in sport (Independent Sport Panel 2009) and the fact that non-participation is often related to gender, socio-economic and geographic location subgroups in society (Office for Recreation and Sport 2010), as well as minority ethnic background (Taylor 2000).Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012) studies on participation of Australian youth in sports and cultural activities (drama/dance) indicated that overall, 40% of young adolescents aged 15 years and over did not participate in sporting or cultural activities. This lack of participation rose to 36% for those in one-parent families; to 44% for those from non-English speakingThe study investigated student involvement in sports as part of co-curricular activities in the school and outside, and the effect of parental support upon their child's participation in sport. The purpose of the study was to investigate in-depth the views of year 11 students from six Australian schools about their parents' influence on their participation in sport. The schools agreed to allow their students to participate on a voluntary basis. The primary data were gathered from 111 students in the form of written personal statements in response to the researcher's open-ended guideline questions, based on the humanistic sociological approach of studying respondents' personal perspectives on a particular phenomenon. The 80% of respondents who claimed to play sport were involved in a total of 23 different sports, with soccer being the most frequently mentioned (29%). The 20% of respondents who did not play sport all attended schools where participation in sport was not compulsory. Parental support for sports participation was evident in 89% of their comments, but only 11% of parents played an active role. The negative family constraints identified by 15% of respondents referred to issues such as lack of parental interest in sport, concerns about safety, maintaining a balance between sport and other areas of life, and the cost involved sports, secondary school students, parental support KEYWORDS Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/12/18 11:23 AM

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