Factors Influencing Sports Involvement of Adolescents in China: A Four-Dimension Model

• In Event: Developing life skills among youth: programmatic approaches and research evidence

Proposal

Sport involvement is a concept developed by Dr. Kenyon, an American scholar for discussing sports role. He believes that "sport involvement” covers sport cognitive level, emotional inclination level, direct involvement level, indirect involvement level, and it also integrates the social stratum characteristics of participants. Sports sociology tends to regard "sport involvement" as one of common social phenomena in modern society, and regards it as one of the ways for social members to realize socialization. The "Sports Law of the People's Republic of China" puts forward that "citizens should be encouraged to participate in social sports activities to improve their physical and mental health; the administrative departments of education and schools should take physical education as an integral part of school education and guarantee the time spent in sports activities every day during the school period". Regular participation in sports can promote students' physical and mental health. In 2007, the State Council of the CPC Central Committee stressed in its opinion on strengthening youth sports and strengthening their physique: to ensure that students exercise one hour a day. In 2010, the National Program for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development (2010-2020) also pointed out that to ensure students' physical education curriculum and extracurricular activities, vigorously carry out "sunshine sports" to ensure that students exercise one hour a day, and constantly improve students' physical fitness. The promulgation of a series of policies, measures, activities and standards from the State Council to the state educational administration shows the determination of the government to promote the active sport involvement of adolescents.
This research adopts the social ecosystem theory of Bronfenbrenner as the conceptual framework, which basically discusses the lack of physical exercise for adolescents not only due to school education, but also a comprehensive system involving multiple aspects of family and society. Individuals are nested in a series of interactions among these systems, which interacts with and affects individual development. The system is divided into four levels, namely micro system, medium system, external system and macro system. For adolescents sport involvement, individuals, families, communities, and schools in which they live, have a direct impact and influence. Previous researches on sport involvement in China mainly focuses on investigate the current level of different classes, different regions, women, and special populations. Some studies have pointed out the factors affecting sports involvement include schools, communities, and families, but seldom identified the individual efforts, which definitely is one of the most important factors according to social ecosystem theory. Therefore, this study will added this factor and recheck the reliability and validity of new four dimension model
This research takes mixed methods of both quantitative and qualitative studies. The quantitative data was collected for twice by questionnaire. The first round data collection was conducted to develop the new four dimension model in 8 primary schools, 8 junior high schools, and 8 high schools in four districts and counties in Beijing, China, which covers 2207 adolescents aged 8-20 years old. After deleting the missing values, the valid data come from 1988 adolescents, including 986 boys and 1002 girls (M=14.73, SD=1.94). Based on this, the second round data collection was conducted after four months to check the reliability and validity of the new model. A total of 2,200 adolescents aged 8-20 years were selected. After deleting the missing values, the valid sample were 2,055 adolescents, including 1,050 males and 1005 females (M = 12.28, SD = 3.35). All quantitative data was analyzed by the social science statistical software package (SPSS 22) for descriptive, reliability, correlation statistical analysis. The MPLUS 7 statistical software package was also performed for validation factor analysis (CFA) by the structural equation modeling method. Besides, the qualitative data was collected by face-to-face interviews with professors or associate professors in relevant fields in China, including 4 professors and 8 associate professors, to provided deep analysis and constructive advice for the sport involvement.
The result finding shows that new four dimension model of adolescents’ sport involvement is reliable and valid, which includes 4 first-order dimensions (school dimension, community dimension, family dimension, personal dimension) and 10 secondary dimensions (physical lessons, exam requirements, school attitudes towards student sport involvement, community climate, community conditions, parental attitudes, parents Participation, family financial investment in sports activities, sports attitude, health awareness). The CFI was 0.91, the TLI was 0.90, the RMSEA was 0.059, and the SRMR was 0.046. The internal consistency coefficients of the four sub-scales school dimension (second order), community dimension, family dimension, and personal dimension are better (α=0.94, α=0.88, α=0.89, α=0.83). The final 32 items of the “Adolescent Sport Involvement Constraint Questionnaire” can be used as a measurement tool to evaluate the factors influencing adolescents’ sport involvement. This research provides an tool and makes innovative contribution for better understanding the adolescent sport involvement constraint in China.

Author

• Lei Zhang, Sports Deparment, Renmin University of China