A study on participation motives and barriers of junior high school sports team players in New Taipei City

[[abstract]]This study was to understand the current status of background, barriers and participation motives of sports team players in New Taipei City, and to compare the difference between participation motives and barriers of different demographic factors via questionnaires. Convenience sampling methods were applied for the investigation, and 442 questionnaires were valid. Descriptive statistics analysis, exploratory factor analysis, independent sample t-test, independent sample one-way ANOVA, Scheffe’s method and Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation are used to analyze these data. The results of this study were as follows: 1.Male players of junior high sports teams are the majority(62.9%), the largest group is the 9th grade(39%), the second largest group is the 8th grade(33.2%), the best performance achievement in the top 6 teams of New Taipei City dominated at most(40%), and the scores of the students’ academic achievement tests were mostly below 59 points(34.5%), the highest proportion of student parents’ monthly salaries were below $40,000 NTD(36.9%). The highest participation of students is from the team of track-field(25.6%) and the least participation of students from billiards(2%). 2.The top 5 participation motives includes: (1) skill improvement, (2) new technique learning, (3) extra sports skills, (4) fun, and (5) good for high school application. 3.The top 5 barriers includes: (1) governmental ignorance of school sports teams, (2) failure of academic performance, (3) inadequateness of team financial support, (4) overload training, and (5)conflicts between training and studying. 4.There is a significant difference of participation motives in sports teams. 5.There are significant differences of barriers in grade, best performance, and sports team. 6.There is a significant negative relation between participation motives and barriers of junior high school sports team players in New Taipei City.