Abstract
The objective of this study was to identify and compare the participation motives of school children towards engagement in physical activity. Two hundred and eighty students (Mage=17.65±0.95 years) were selected from two different types of schools, namely government school (N=134) and private school (N=146), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The instrument used to collect the data was Motivation for Physical Activities Measure- Revised by (Ryan et al., 1997). Ranking order was applied to identify the ‘most important reasons' and ‘least important reasons' for participation, and t- test was applied to compare means between the groups. Government and private school children showed higher mean values on interest/enjoyment and competence. Significant difference was observed on interest/enjoyment and fitness factor among school children. No significant difference was observed on competence, appearance, and social factors. Government school children ranked three important reasons for participation in physical activities as ‘because I wanted to be physically fit', ‘because I wanted to look or maintain weight so I look better', and ‘because I wanted to maintain my physical well-being'. Whereas private school children ranked best three reasons for engagement as, ‘because I want to look or maintain weight so I look better', because I want to improve my appearance, because I wanted to be physically fit'. The least important reason for participation was social factors for both types of school children.
Highlights
Motivation is a complex phenomenon that is impossible to subsume under a single model [1]
The results exhibited that important reasons for participation for both types of school children are mostly interest and enjoyment factor and most studies confirm that interest towards the activity and enjoyment derived from the activity are among the main reasons [18,19,20,21,22,37,38,39]
It was observed during the data collection that the children from private school were inactive in their PE classes and in general the population was looking overweight comparing with government school children
Summary
Motivation is a complex phenomenon that is impossible to subsume under a single model [1]. Drawing on the excellent review of literature [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], the reason sports people give for participating and dropping out are multiple and diverse. Weiss and Petlickhoff [11], for example, categorized the major motives for participation into competence (e.g. to learn and improve skills), affiliation (e.g. to make friends be part of a team), fitness (e.g., to be physically active, get in shape), and fun. Among the several reasons given for decreased interest and a subsequent withdrawal from sport was lack of fun, issues with the coach, the time commitment required, lack of playing time, overemphasis on winning, and greater interest in other activities [14]
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