Associations between sport involvement and youth psychosocial development in Sweden : a longitudinal study

Abstract

There is a widespread belief that organized sport can be used as a tool for positive youth development. However, phenomena such as parental pressure, binge drinking, doping, bullying and marginalization are also present within the sport milieu, with potential risks for negative outcomes to occur. The aim of the present study was to examine the longitudinal effects of organized sport involvement on indicators of youth psychosocial development over 24 months. Surveys assessing reported sport involvement and psychosocial development indicators were carried out at baseline (T1), 12 months (T2), and 24 months (T3). The results, based on self-reports of 920 youth, ages 10-18 years from Sweden, showed strong evidence of an association between baseline sports involvement and end line selfesteem (SE) (r=.15; p<.001), perceived physical competence (PPC) (r=.47; p<.001), and social competence (PSC) (r=.21; p<.001), reported grades (GRAD) (r=.13; p<.001) and alcohol use (ALC) (r=.10; p=.016). After adjusting for selection effects (i.e. dropping out of sport) and prior level outcomes, the effects of sport involvement on indicators of youths’ psychosocial development used in this study, were in general negligible (SE=.05, p=.20;PSC=.05, p=.20;GRAD=.04, p=.60;ALC=.03, p=.49) except for PPC (PPC=.14, p<.001). The results of this study highlight the importance of using longitudinal studies that account for variances explained by prior level outcomes, sociodemographic variables and dropouts from sports