The profile of personal autonomy in athlete and non-athlete adolescents

Abstract

During adolescence, the individual makes the transition to maturity, their personality and self-concept being intensely developed due to sociocultural environmental factors. Among the essential changes occurring within this stage, rendering its specificity, we mention the development of personal autonomy. This characteristic is defined by self-control and self-determination, being one of the most relevant determinant factors in building efficiency, resilience and psychosocial behaviour in general. On the contrary, low levels of personal autonomy may lead to poor school and professional results, as well as some behavioural disorders. This study aims at identifying the characteristics of personal autonomy in adolescent subjects, by comparing them to age-matched athletes. The participants in this study were 158 students aged 15 years from the "Grigore Moisil" National College in Bucharest. Twenty of them (12.65%) practice sport on a regular basis. In order to describe the profile of personal autonomy for the subjects through the four related components ("Value component of autonomy", "Behavioural autonomy", "Cognitive autonomy", "Emotional autonomy"), the survey method was used, having as a specific tool the Personal Autonomy (PA) assessment questionnaire, this being part of the Cognitrom Assessment System platform for psychological issues. Using the t-test for independent samples, we have analysed whether there are statistical differences between the surveyed groups: adolescent athletes vs. adolescents who do not engage in systematic sport activities, a comparison regarding the means of the investigated dependent variablesthe value component of autonomy, behavioural autonomy, cognitive autonomy and emotional autonomy.