Parental Purposes for Motivating Children to Engage in School-Based Sports

Abstract

This Study examines the effects of parental attitudes on children’s school sport participation. It will focus on different people and institutions that are linked to promoting sports in School -aged children. The main purpose of the study is to assess the parents’ expectations when motivating their children for school sport programs. We have also analyzed the relationship between parents’ attitudes towards their children’s sporting habits. The primary research question for this inquiry is “what are the parental beliefs about extracurricular sport activities and what their expectations of these programs are?” There are many researches already carried out to find the relationship between the present situations in Sri Lankan school children’s participation in sports, which is considerably high. A measure of parental attitude that is independent of the child’s behavior is important in covering the gap in the existing research. I have collected responses from nine schools in the Gampaha district, Sri Lanka. The primary data was collected from 270 school children who are engaged in and not engaged in school sports. Data was analyzed for statistics, percentages, factor loading and group comparisons by using the software SPSS 21.0. The findings show mainly seven expectations influencing parents’ attitudes. The key parental attitude that determine their encouragement of their children to engage in sports is the approachability of coaches. Parents are of the opinion that sport participation has had a positive influence on attitudes towards making good grades, and they believe that children would be less likely to hang out with the wrong crowd if they are involved in sports. The positive recognition received from participating in sports was beneficial, and children seem to be more satisfied with school when participating in sports. All these factors have 81% variance to the dependent variable. Female children’s sport participation is only marginally influenced by female parents when female children are growing up. The results imply that promoting sports to the younger generation seems to be a fruitful strategy in creating a sporting habit and promoting sports participation among parents. However, there are challenges to be overcome in promoting female participation.