From a public health perspective, sport participation is one important form of physical activity for children and youth. In 2008 for example, 71% of Canadian children ages 6-9 and 84% of children ages 10-13 reported participating in organized sport over the course of 1 year [1]. Similar rates were observed for American children and youth, with 69% of girls and 75% of boys reporting participation in organized sport [2]. Beyond participation in physical activity, organized sport (i.e., participation in a sport with a coach) has been continually identified as an important context that can support the health, development, and well-being of youth [3,4,5].
Despite this potential, researchers have reported inconsistent and sometimes contradictory findings concerning the health and developmental impacts of sport participation. For example, recent systematic reviews have shown that while sport participation may be associated with lower use of illicit drugs, rates of alcohol use among youth athletes is higher than among non-athlete peers [6, 7]. Mixed results have also been reported in reviews focusing on other outcomes, such as self-esteem, sense of competence, and delinquency: some studies show a positive relationship, other studies show no association or even negative impacts of participation [8,9,10,11].
While there are many potential explanations for these discrepant findings, authors have continually pointed to issues concerning the measurement of sport participation [5, 7,8,9, 12]. The sport literature has been dominated by cross-sectional research that has measured sport participation as a binary (yes or no) or count (number of sports played) variable and examined relationships with developmental and health outcomes. This has been especially true of survey-based research in sport [7,8,9]. Such blunt measures conceal tremendous variability in experiences with sport, leaving the impact of sport on health and development as essentially a black box [12].
Examples from qualitative research illustrate just how much experiential information is lost when sport is measured this way. Camiré, Trudel, and Forneis, for example, reported young athletes felt sport provided them with opportunities for leadership and life skill development [13]. In contrast, Buford-May documented incidents of racism in youth sport participation [14]. We would expect different health and developmental outcomes associated with experiences of leadership and life skills versus racism, but current survey measures would classify youth in both studies as athletes (i.e., “yes” to a question on sport participation) and therefore fail to capture important variability in their experiences.
To address this gap in the current literature, we propose to create a Sport Experiences Measure for Children and Youth (SEM:CY) to capture salient experiences in sport that may better predict positive and negative developmental outcomes among youth. Furthermore, we propose to design the measure specifically for survey-based population health research. This way, the measure could be added to existing surveys that monitor youth health and development. For example, such a measure could be added to on-going surveillance and longitudinal adolescent health surveys such as The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health [15], Adolescent Health Survey [16], Canadian Tobacco Use Survey [17], and the Health Behavior of School Aged Children survey [18]. Adding the SEM:CY to existing surveys would greatly increase the availability and quality of data on youths’ experiences in sport to help advance research beyond mixed results to a more refined understanding of when and how sport participation impacts youth development.
To be useful in survey-based health research, the measure must be self-reported, comprehensive, and brief. The measure needs to be self-reported as this is the most common method used in population health surveys and is also well-suited to capture subjective experiences. A comprehensive measure is required to fully capture the multiple facets of youths’ experience in sport. The measure must be brief to be included in existing and future population health surveys, which include a number of other measures and have limited space for additional questions [19]. Currently, no measure meeting these criteria exists.
Understanding youths’ experiences in sport
The impact of youth sport has garnered significant interest across disciplines, with studies examining the potential health impacts of sport participation [20, 21], academic impacts [22, 23], social and psychological impacts on the youth [7], impacts on delinquency [10], and societal benefits [24, 25]. Measuring youths’ experience in sport is essential to advance research across disciplines. To develop the SEM:CY, we will draw heavily from the positive youth development (PYD) in sports literature. Youth experience in sport has garnered significant attention in the PYD in sport literature. PYD is an area of psychology that is interested in the competencies and processes that result in positive development [3].
Recently, Holt and colleagues’ [26] developed the Grounded Theory of Positive Youth Development through Sport model based on a recent synthesis of 63 qualitative studies on positive youth development through sport. This model includes distal social-ecological systems and individual characteristics that influence the sport, features of the sport climate that impact sport experiences, and program focus that contribute to positive youth development outcomes (see Fig. 1).
Consistent with our focus on youths’ subjective experience in sport (more proximal influences), we focus on the three elements of the sport climate that support positive youth development outcomes in the model: relationships with coaches (identified as adults in the model), relationships with teammates (identified as peers in the model), and involvement of parents. As our intention for the SEM:CY is to apply to outcomes beyond PYD, we also draw on the broader sport literature to ensure comprehensive coverage of youth sport experiences. Not surprisingly, the importance of relationships with coaches, parents, and teammates in sport has also been identified in the broader sport literature as essential to youths’ experiences in sport [5, 27,28,29,30,31]. Additionally, other influencers such as family members other than a parent (e.g., siblings), parents of others on the team, and spectators at games has been identified as important to youth’s sport experience, though they have received less attention in the literature to date [9, 32].
Most research on youths’ sport experience has focused on the role of the coach. In particular, the importance of the coach in establishing the motivational climate of the sport is one of the most established aspects of youths sport experience. Motivational climate is grounded in Achievement Goal Theory [33, 34] and considers different ways for interpreting competence: self- referenced competence that focuses on skill development and mastery and external referenced competence that evaluated competence in reference to others (e.g., winning and comparing teammates to each other). When coaches that emphasize skill development and mastery, youth are more likely to show positive outcomes whereas coaching behaviours that emphasize winning and comparisons with others are associated with negative outcomes including anxiety and stress, conflict with peers, less sportsman-like behaviour, and negative developmental outcomes [35].
Teammate and parents are also important in establishing the motivational climate of the sport. While the role of both teammates and parents have received less empirical attention than coaches, [35] the impact of both teammates and parents has been demonstrated independent of the influence of coaches [36,37,38,39]. When teammates emphasis skill development and mastery (i.e., self-referenced motivational climate), youth report more enjoyment of sport, pro-social sport attitudes (e.g., congratulating an opponent after a loss) and fewer antisocial sport attitudes (e.g., attitudes towards cheating and gamesmanship). The same pattern of results has been found with parental motivational climate: emphasis of skills is related to positive outcomes, while emphasizing winning is related to negative outcomes [35].
The importance of the coach-athlete relationship is another established element of youths’ sport experience. A positive relationship and rapport between athletes and coaches is related to a number of positive developmental outcomes including higher perceived competence, pro-social norms, and lower stress whereas negative rapport with coaches is associated with higher stress and negative peer dynamics [40,41,42]. There is a dearth of research on the relationship of teammates and parents relative to coaches. However, the research that has been conducted reports positive relationships with teammates and parents in sport is associated with positive development including perceived physical competence and personal and social skills [43,44,45,46].
While there is recognition that coaches, teammates, and parents each play an important role in youths’ sport experience, there is some evidence of other influences on youth sport experience. For example, positive spectator behaviours (e.g., cheering for members of both teams) and negative spectator behaviours (e.g., taunting players or arguing with officials) has been associated with the sportsmanlike behaviour of young athletes during games [32]. We propose that these types of behaviours can influence the motivational climate of the sport. Arguing or aggressiveness towards officials can indicate that winning is highly valued whereas recognizing skill and achievements on both teams can indicate the value of skill. Similar to relationships within sport, the impact of relationships with other family members (e.g., siblings) and peers aside from teammates is an area that has been identified as warranting further investigation [11].
In summary, a sport experience where coaches, teammates, parents, and others engage in behaviours that foster skill development, do not overemphasize winning, and youth have positive relationships is likely to produce a more quality sport experience and enhance developmental outcomes. Alternatively, an experience that focuses on winning, where negative behaviour is modeled, and there are conflicts with relationships is more likely to produce a lower quality experience and be associated with negative developmental outcomes.
Based on this review, we propose an initial conceptual model for the SEM:CY measure that includes the following domains: relationships with coaches, relationships with parents, relationships with teammates, relationships with others, coach motivational climate, parental motivational climate, teammate motivational climate, and other motivational climate (see Fig. 2). This model will act as a starting point for item generation and will be thoroughly tested and refined through expert input and statistical analysis as detailed in our methodology.
SEM:CY in relation to existing measures
While there are a number of surveys that capture some elements of youths’ experience of sport, there is no single measure that fully captures all of the domains of our conceptual model. In fact, even providing partial coverage of the proposed SEM:CY domains would require several measures. For example, there are separate measures of motivational climate for coaches, parents, and peers respectively [47,48,49]. These measures were designed specifically for motivational climate, so do not capture the quality of relationships. Other measures that focus on the source of influence in sport such as the Coaching Behaviour Scale for Sport [50] and the Coach Athlete Relationship Scale [51] were not designed to measure motivational climate. Using existing measures to capture youths’ sport experience would require significant time to complete which is not feasible for survey research. This is especially true for surveys that are designed to measure health and youth development across multiple domains. There are also potential gaps in existing measures of youths’ experience in sport. For example, the perceived impact of others in the sport community on motivational climate and the impact of sport on relationships with others outside sport are not captured with an existing measure.
It is also important to recognize that while some measures might initially appear to overlap with the proposed SEM:CY, there are important distinctions. The Youth Experiences Survey- Sport (YES-S) [52] was developed to capture positive youth development such as personal, social, and cognitive skills. As such, the YES-S [52] does not address most of the factors we propose in youths’ experience in sport. Referring back to Holt and colleagues’ [26] model, the YES-S captures the PYD outcomes box. This is further evidenced in prior research that has employed the YES-S as an outcome measure of positive youth development in sport [45, 53,54,55]. Therefore, the YES-S and our proposed SEM:CY measure are distinct in both purpose and in coverage.
