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The role of parents on their children’s involvement in individual and team sports

Siounas, A., Zetou, E., & Vernadakis, N. 

School of Physical Education & Sport Science Democritus University of Thrace

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether parental motivation (mother and father separately) plays a key role in engaging their children in individual and team sports. The sample consisted of 200 children-athletes, aged between the ages of 8-12 years of individual and team sports. The Greek version of the questionnaire “The Parent-Initiated Motivational Climate Questionnaire-2″ PIMCQ-2” of White, Duda and Keller, (1998) which was translated by Bebetsos, Hadjiandreou, Zetou, Anthoniou and Karamousalidis, (2014), was used.  According to results of the study differences emerged between parents (father and mother) with regard to children’s participation in sports. More specifically, in the “pleasure climate of learning” and “climate of concern” about children considering their mothers gave greater emphasis to their fathers while the opposite occurs for climate success without effort. There were also differences between group and individual sports. Specifically, in individual sports, as the children reported, the climate pleasure / learning from the mother’s side and also from the father’s side was higher than the team sports children. Finally, there were differences in terms of the gender of children. For girls the climate of pleasure in learning following the father was higher than for boys. For the mother the concern was at a highest level for girls versus boys. The main conclusion of the paper is that there are differences between parents (father and mother) regarding the participation of their children in individual and team sports. Future research could investigate this issue qualitatively, using semi structured interviews to deepen further on the issue of incentives given by parents to their children regarding sports.

Keywords: athletics, motivation, family, parental models, parental involvement

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Cite this article as:
Siounas, A., Zetou, E., & Vernadakis, N. "The role of parents on their children’s involvement in individual and team sports," PANR Journal, December 10, 2015, https://www.panr.com.cy/?p=1333.