Characteristics of the Sportsmanship and Unsportsmanlike Conduct Evaluation Tools in Youth Sport

Abstract

In youth sport contexts, aggressiveness and violence constitute a deplorable social phenomenon. There are sportsmanlike conducts as forms of alternatives to these types of behaviors. Specifically, the present paper aims to introduce the characteristics of the evaluation tools used to assess the sportiveness, aggressiveness and violence constructs in sporting environments in general and, more precisely, in youth sport. The methods used to evaluate the previous constructs are described based on a bibliometric analysis of the information base obtained from psychology, physical activity and sports specialized data bases. From the documents review it appears that, on the one hand, a few instruments are used to evaluate sportsmanship and unsportsmanlike conducts in educational sports, and most of them focus on professional sport. Furthermore, performed researches concerning common sporting environments tend to focus on evaluating attitudes and conducts of sportsmen while ignoring the influence of other social agents such as coaches, parents/spectators, referees. Therefore, it would be desirable that some proper instruments were elaborated and allowed evaluating sportsmanship and unsportsmanlike conduct, particularly in youth sport. The evaluation must enable the type of pro social and antisocial attitudes and conducts to be identified, as well as the agents which carry them out.