The impact of competition in physical activity and sport on the self-perception of individuals with physical disabilities

Abstract

Background: Physical activity has traditionally been treated as one of many strategies to improve an individual's quality of life. Until fairly recently, this presumption has been accepted as truth and little research has been done on proving or disproving the claim. Now, there has been a larger focus on it and numerous studies have analyzed the contribution physical activity has on the individual's quality of life in all areas. Objective: This study analyzes the current literature in the area of physical activity and sport as related to self-perception and the overall quality of life in individuals with physical disabilities. Methods: Using the websites of the following literature databases: Pubmed, Sport Discus, Medline, APAQ archives, and European Journal of Adapted Physical Activity archives, articles from 1990-2009 were selected based on their focus on analyzing the relationship of self-perception and quality of life to physical activity and sport for individuals with physical disabilities. Using these mentioned search programs, 274 articles were found using the keywords for this article. Of these, 40 articles were chosen for being applicable to the topic and target population. Nine of these articles were then used in the direct results as others were used for anecdotal or background information, due to their lack of consistent terminology. Without consistent terminology it was not possible to use these anecdotal articles to make proper comparisons of results. These trends, from the remaining nine articles were then compared to studies with able-bodied populations. Results: The authors found that, overall, there is a significant positive relationship between physical activity and sport programs on the one hand, and increased self-perception among individuals with physical disabilities on the other. This increase can be seen in the process of the comparison of the individual constructs of self-perception as well as of the differences in self-perception as a whole. Quality of life was also seen, in some studies, to be an additional reference for comparison. The inclusion of competition had no significant effect on these relationships of selfperception. However, individuals competing at an elite or world class level showed significantly higher self-perception than all other groups. When able-bodied studies were compared, similar trends were found in both overall difference in self-perception and differences seen between competition levels. Conclusions: Findings show that competition should be included in physical activity and sport programs, for individuals with physical disabilities, only if it results in an increase in positive experiences for the participants. Participation in physical activity and sport programs contribute to an improvement in the quality of life of individuals with physical disabilities.