Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Oct 11:12:738343.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.738343. eCollection 2021.

Sport-Related Affective Benefits for Teenagers Are Getting Greater as They Approach Adulthood: A Large-Scale French Investigation

Annie Carton  1 , Alexis Barbry  2   3 , Jérémy Coquart  2   4 , Hervé Ovigneur  3 , Camille Amoura  1 , Gabor Orosz  1
Affiliations

Sport-Related Affective Benefits for Teenagers Are Getting Greater as They Approach Adulthood: A Large-Scale French Investigation

Annie Carton et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The present investigation examined how sports club membership is related to adolescents' daily negative and positive affects as they age. Robust prior results demonstrated that sports club membership is positively related to positive affect and negatively related to negative affect. However, surprisingly, no prior studies examined whether these benefits are consistently present throughout the teenage years or there are certain critical periods when teenagers can affectively profit more from being members of a sports club. The present cross-sectional investigation examined these questions on a comprehensive sample of French adolescents (N=17,337, female=7,604, aged between 10 and 18, M age=12.45years, SD age=1.94years). Besides the expected affective benefits of a sports club membership, there was no interaction between age and negative affect. However, late adolescents reported greater daily positive affective benefits of sports club membership than early adolescents. These results suggest that late adolescents can use the extra affective benefits of sports club membership to gain advantages for the first steps of their adult life, such as coping with career start or transition to higher education. These results can provide guidelines for future studies to prioritize late adolescents with heightened positive sport-related affective benefits. It can also be useful information to promote sport among late adolescents.

Keywords: adolescents; broaden-and-build; physical activity; positive affect; positive psychology; sports club membership.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Negative and positive affects along sports club membership and age of adolescents. The left panel (A) depicts negative affect-related results, and it indicates a significant main effect of the sports club membership. The right panel (B) depicts the main effect of the sports club membership on positive affects, as well as its interaction with the age of the students showing that late adolescents experience more positive emotions than early adolescents if they belong to a sports club (compared to the lack of membership).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ahn S., Fedewa A. L. (2011). A meta-analysis of the relationship between children’s physical activity and mental health. J. Pediatr. Psychol. 36, 385–397. doi: 10.1093/jpepsy/jsq107, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bang H., Wong D., Park S. (2020). School engagement, self-esteem, and depression of adolescents: the role of sport participation and volunteering activity and gender differences. Child Youth Serv. Rev. 113:105012. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105012 - DOI
    1. Baumeister R. F., Leary M. R. (1995). The need to belong. Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychol. Bull. 117, 497–529. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497, PMID: - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bedard C., Hanna S., Cairney J. (2020). A longitudinal study of sport participation and perceived social competence in youth. J. Adolesc. Health 66, 352–359. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.09.017 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Biddle S. J. H., Asare M. (2011). Physical activity and mental health in children and adolescents: A review of reviews. Br. J. Sports Med. 45, 886–895. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2011-090185 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources