Promoting awareness, knowledge of and compliance with the National Children's Physical Activity Guidelines

Abstract

Introduction: Engagement in exercise and sports has been recommended for adolescents to enhance physical fitness and healthy development. Especially, school-based extracurricular sports activities (SBECSA) are providing a major opportunity for adolescents to play sports. Additionally, SBECSA contribute to positive youth development. By contrast, it is challenge for teachers and coaches to manage SBECSA with active participation of students. Although there are some studies examined factors associated with motivation of adolescents to participate in some sports, no study focusing onmotivation to participate in SBECSA among them. Therefore, the purpose of the present studywas to examine the factors decreasing motivation of students to participate in SBECSA. Methods: Personal semi-structured interview was performed to 23 student members of 9 SBECSA that have external coach (men: n=11; age range: 12–17 years). They were recruited from 3 junior high schools and 3 high schools, 5 prefectures in Japan. To vary the characteristics of participants, purposeful sampling was conducted. The interview contained predetermined openended questions about factors decreasingmotivation to participate in SBECSA. Participants were asked to respond freely to the questions and all topics were explored until exhausted. For analysis, the KJ method—a qualitative type of analyses—was selected. Each recorded interview was transcribed verbatim. All transcribed data were divided into individual content. Then, nearly identical contents were grouped together and consisted of ‘sub-categories’, and ‘categories’. Definition of each category was given by three researchers. Results: Eight categories—uncomfortable climate of SBECSA (e.g. bad climate of SBECSA, and lack of unity among team members), undesirable coaching and indication (e.g. getting scorched, and inconsistency between self and coach’s assessment), bad physical condition (fatigue, feeling of unwellness, and injury), undesirable contents of practice (being not able to do desirable practice, and hard training), lack of skill (being not able to play well, and guiltiness to unskilled play), retirement of team members (retirement of older team members), problems in school life (a lot of homework), and bad weather (rainy)—were identified. Discussion: The present study showed novel factors decreasing motivation of students to participate in SBECSA, although a part of resultswere similarwithprevious study such asundesirable coaching and indication, and undesirable contents of practice. Teachers and coaches could increase motivation of students by making good climate of SBECSA and hearing students’ opinion for improve contents of practice.