The Future of Education
Youth Experience in Sport: A Case of Football Development Programs in Lithuania
Edgaras Stankevicius, Lithuanian Sports University (Lithuania)
Vilija Bitė Fominienė, Lithuanian Sports University (Lithuania)
Abstract
Participation in organized sport is widely recognized as an important context that can support children and adolescent’s health, positive development, and well-being [1]. Football development programs, which involve the largest number of youths worldwide, also contribute to these educational and developmental outcomes through sport. However, survey-based measures that capture key aspects of youth experiences in organized sport have not yet been applied in Lithuanian sports education context. The aim of this study was to assess youth experience in football using a Lithuanian version of adapted and validated modified Youth Experiences Survey for Sport (MYES-S). This study included 121 participants (mean age 14.49, SD = 0.5, all males) from football development programs. Data were collected using the modified Youth Experiences Survey for Sport (MYES-S) [2] and the Coach-created Empovering and Disempovering Motivational Climate Questionair (EDMCQ-C) [3]. The current study provides support for the validity and reliability of the Lithuanian version of the MYES-S. In addition, the results of the study state that initiative (M = 3.49; SD = 0.46) and personal and social skills (M = 3.27; SD = 0.51) are the most prominent youth experiences acquired in sports. Meanwhile, cognitive skills are indicated as the least developed (M = 2.41; SD = 0.82). In addition, it was found that youth experiences in football are related to the motivational climate created by the coach.
Keywords: Sport education, youth, personal experience
[1] Cairney, J., Clark, H. J., Kwan, M. Y. W., Bruner, M., & Tamminen, K. (2018). Measuring sport experiences in children and youth to better understand the impact of sport on health and positive youth development: designing a brief measure for population health surveys. BMC public health, 18, 446.
[2] Kim, K. R., Bowers, M. T., Lee, W. young, & Slana, R. (2022). Validation of modified youth experience survey for sport (MYES-S) using multidimensional Rasch model. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 20(4), 1193–1207.
[3] Appleton, P. R., Ntoumanis, N., Quested, E., Viladrich, C., & Duda, J. L. (2016). Initial validation of the coach-created Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ-C). Psychology of sport and exercise, 22, 53-65.
