Quality of Life in Professional, Semiprofessional, and Amateur Athletes

Ana Lúcia Padrão dos Santos

doi:10.1177/2158244013497723

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the Ferrans and Powers Quality of Life Index (QLI) and its domains in Brazilian athletes. The sample comprised 219 athletes from six sports, and included 127 men and 92 women, with mean age of 23.1 years (±5.2). All participants were associated with a sports organization and participated in official competitions at the professional, semiprofessional, and amateur levels, and completed a self-report demographics survey and the QLI during one testing session. Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests were utilized to compare differences between competitive levels and gender, respectively. Significant differences were reported between professional and amateur athletes for the socioeconomic ( p = .016; professional: 17.2, amateur: 15.1) and psychological/spiritual ( p = .011; professional: 24.3, amateur: 21.9) domains and between genders on the family domain ( p = .027; male: 21.8, female: 20.2). These findings suggest that professional athletes are more satisfied from a socioeconomic and psychological/spiritual perspective when compared with the amateur group. In addition, the results suggest that family issues are more satisfying and/or have less importance for males than for females. This study provides further insights into the quality of life of athletes and suggests differences based on competition levels and gender. Future studies are needed to further our understanding of the quality of life in athletes.

Highlights

The quality of life is an important issue in contemporary society and is central to the development of social policy dedicated to individuals, small groups or society in general (Phillips, 2006)
No differences were reported for subject demographics that are shown in Tables 1 and 2
Quality of Life Index (QLI) values are reported in Table 3 with socioeconomic domain reporting the lowest value and the psychological/spiritual domain reporting the highest values

Summary

Introduction

The quality of life is an important issue in contemporary society and is central to the development of social policy dedicated to individuals, small groups or society in general (Phillips, 2006). SAGE Open that athletes report better quality of life than nonathletes in some aspects of life such as physical functioning, general health perceptions, social functioning, and mental health (Snyder et al, 2010) It appears that the level of competition (competitive vs amateur [Modolo, Mello, Gimenez, Tufik, & Antunes, 2009] and elite vs nonelite [McAllister, Motamedi, Hame, Shapiro, & Dorey, 2001]) can positively impact the quality of life of athletes. These findings suggest that frequency and volume of the sports practice and level of competition can impact the quality of life of an individual. Findings suggest that male athletes experience better quality of life than female athletes, in emotional functioning (Tanabe, Snyder, Bay, & Mcleod, 2010)

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