Parents' Sport Socialization Values, Perceived Motivational Climate and Adolescents' Antisocial Behaviors.

Francesca Danioni,Daniela Barni

doi:10.5964/ejop.v15i4.1598

Abstract

Parents play a key role in young athletes’ sport experience. In particular, parents’ sport goals for children may influence young athletes’ morally relevant sport behaviors. The present study involves 172 Italian adolescents (female = 51.7%; age M = 15.41, SD = 1.73) practicing team sports and analyzed whether and the extent to which parents’ sport socialization values, those values adolescents perceived their parents wanted them to endorse (i.e., moral, competence, status values), were associated with young athletes’ antisocial behaviors towards teammates and opponents. Adolescents’ perceptions of the prominent motivational climate (i.e., mastery and performance) within their team were also considered. Participants were asked to fill out questionnaires, including the Youth Sport Values Questionnaire-2, adapted to measure adolescents’ perceptions of parental socialization values, the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire and the Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Sport Scale. The results of multiple linear regression analysis and relative weight analysis showed that mastery motivational climate, as protective factor, and mothers’ status values, as risk factor, were the most important variables in predicting adolescents’ antisocial behavior towards teammates. As far as adolescents’ antisocial behavior towards opponents was concerned, performance motivational climate and mothers’ status values were the most relevant predictors: the more adolescents perceived their coaches and mothers as giving importance to performance and status, the higher was the frequency of their antisocial behavior in sport. Implications and further developments of the study are discussed.

Highlights

Parents play a key role in young athletes’ sport experience
By using a relatively recent analytical strategy, that is, the Relative Weight Analysis (RWA) (Johnson, 2000), which is able to take the interrelations among variables into account, we addressed three main questions: “How much of the variation among adolescents with regard to antisocial behaviors can be explained by parents’ sport socialization values and by the team’s motivational climate?”; “Which is the most important predictor of adolescents’ antisocial behaviors: The parents’ sport socialization values or the team’s motivational climate?”; “Are there differences in predicting antisocial behavior in sport when the recipient is a teammate versus an opponent?”
This study aimed at understanding the influence of adolescent athletes’ perceptions of parental sport socialization values and of the motivational climate promoted within the team in shaping their antisocial behaviors towards teammates and opponents

Summary

Introduction

Parents play a key role in young athletes’ sport experience. In particular, parents’ sport goals for children may influence young athletes’ morally relevant sport behaviors. Are young athletes’ personal goal orientations assumed to mediate the effects of values on their prosocial and antisocial attitudes and cheating (Lee et al, 2008; Lucidi et al, 2017), and the motivational climate promoted by the coaches is likely to influence morally relevant behaviors in youth sport.

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Results

Conclusion