Sport Participation And the Development of Self-Efficacy In Children of Elementary School Level in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Ruth Abigail Pineda, 阿碧佳伊
• Other Authors: Yung-Long Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/9v25aq

碩士 === 國立體育大學 === 國際體育事務研究所 === 106 === Scholars and practitioners have long assessed participation in sport as a potential booster for self-development. Not only regarding the physical aspect of development, but that of emotional and psychological development as well. One of such aspects in which sport could be potentially beneficial is the development of self-efficacy. This study uses the conceptual framework of Bandura's self-efficacy theory and applies a quasi-experiment approach. It not only aims to examine the effect of sport participation as a tool to improve self-efficacy beliefs in children and adolescents of school level in Taiwan, but also to analyze whether children participating in competitive sport present any different results as compared to children participating in non-competitive sport activities. Students participating in this study responded to a questionnaire before and after participating in sport sessions. The sport sessions were divided into two sets: 1) Basketball match session, and 2) basketball drills session. The Self-Efficacy Questionnaire for Children or SEQ-C was used was this thesis; the questionnaire consists of 24-scaled questions asking the participants about their level of belief for high performance in their academic activities and general school involvement. Composite variables of sport participation and self-efficacy were used for paired t-test analysis using the SPSS to measure the difference before and after sport participation for each session group. To determine whether there is a difference in the means of the sample groups for competitive sport compared to non-competitive sport, a two-sample t-test was used in SPSS. Tests showed that after participating in sport activities, children presented improved scores for the SEQ-C tests. However, it is important to note that, although there was an improvement, the increment was minimal. This study also showed that students participating in non-competitive sport activities scored higher in the after-test results. The exploratory factor analysis identified four components. The four components accounted for 66.08% of the variance. The components were labeled “self and social assertiveness”, “academic self-assurance”, “emotional self-control”, and “emotional self-awareness”. In conclusion, sport participation does have an effect on the level of self-efficacy beliefs children can have, however, this study is not conclusive on the significance of that improvement.