Early dropout from Sports: A cross-sectional study in Italian and Spanisch students.

Abstract

Background: early withdrawal from sporting activities is a relevant phenomenon in young people. Lack of movement contributes to the adoption of incorrect lifestyles that will persist even in later ages in all people. Even young athletes may prematurely quit the sport during their school education before reaching their peak performance. When they dropout of sport during developmental age, the possibility to identify talent in sport is compromised. Moreover, systematic exercise programs may actually improve cognitive and metacognitive skills. Therefore, to dropout of sport might interrupt these benefits. In summary, dropout from sport might be identified as an important phenomenon in youth with several negative implications at multiple levels. Furthermore, this process may be correlated to other non-sports factors and domains, such as the attritions factors at intra-personal and interpersonal levels. While the search for factors associated with sport dropout rates involved in both sport and broader lifestyle and achievement domains is ongoing, the relations between those factors, including skills that have a strategic value and are functional in performance and life domains different from sport, are still under-investigated.

Purpose: the main aim of this study was to analyze the association between early sport dropout and relevant strategic learning skills to both sport and academic performance. It was hypothesized that an insufficient level/lack of such skills that are functional to learning processes and mainly studied in academic achievement research might also be associated with early dropout from sport. Conversely, a higher level of these skills might be associated with sport participation. This association was investigated also as function of age, gender, nationality, senior high school curricula and the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of sports activity to perform a comparison between Italy and Spain and to extend the generalizability of results.

Materials and method: the sample consisted of 560 Spanish (301 male, 259 female) and 1892 Italian (1303 male, 589 female) high school students aged 14–18 years. The Spanish participants attended the compulsory secondary school (ESO) and the curriculum of upper secondary education, such as Bachillerato. The Italian students attended upper secondary schools with an enhanced sports curriculum (sports senior high school), and other non-sport (scientific, applied sciences, linguistic, technical) senior high schools. They completed two self-assessment questionnaires concerning physical activity and sports habits (CAPAFD) and learning strategies in the affective-motivational and cognitive-metacognitive domains (QSA-r). The research hypothesis was tested in an exploratory manner, with the descriptive research method and by looking for associations with a cross-sectional design. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed to calculate the impact of demographic variables, sports habits, different high schools curricula and strategic learning skills on sport dropout categories. Data were processed by SPSS Statistics software.

Results: the data analyzed with frequency analysis showed that students dropout of sports at average age of 13.9 ± 2 yrs. A significant effect for age emerged with a wide general and sport-specific sport dropout that increased progressively after sixteen ((χ2 =52.76, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.104). Moreover a gender effect revealed a larger general and sport-specific dropout in females than in males (χ2=21.26, p<.001; Cramer’s V =.093). Further findings showed that dropout rates were minimal in high schools with increased sport curriculum compared to the other Italian and Spanish curricula (χ2 =271.91, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.235). Additional analyses conducted on sport practice in the past as function of gender and nationality revealed a significant association between team sport and dropout rates in male (χ2 =99.46, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.192), female (χ2 =16.72, p=.002, Cramer’s V =.106) and Italian students (χ2 =93.28, p=.002, Cramer’s V =.168). Moreover a lack of persistence in the same (individual/team) sport type was found in association with a higher general and sport-specific dropout rate in males (χ2=68.41, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.159) and in Italian students (χ2=75.52, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.151). Most importantly, further analysis revealed a higher increment in the frequency of the students with general dropout and a lower one in the students with sport-specific in the number of critical values in affective–motivational strategic learning skills (χ2 =42.29, p<.001, Cramer’s V =.094). Cognitive-metacognitive strategic learning skills were non-discriminant for sport dropout rates in both samples of students. Further findings revealed that these skills were associated interactively with both the Italian and the Spanish school curriculum.

Conclusions: this study suggests that personal resources and characteristics, sports habits and sports high school’s curriculum may have a favorable impact on sport persistence and may contribute independently and jointly to sport dropout rates. Affective-motivational learning skills may play a key role in maintaining sports activity over time and in the strategies tailored to dropout prevention for student-athlete engaged in dual-career.