Participation in sports and sociometric status of adolescents

Study aim: To examine the relationships between sport participation and sociometric status of adolescent youths.

Material and methods: A group of 359 secondary school students from central Serbia (143 male and 216 female) aged 16 - 19 years participated in the study. The subjects were given questionnaires pertaining to their participation in sports and sociometric relations, especially "work with" and "interact with".

Results: In total, about 23% of subjects were actively engaged in sports at various levels: local (11%), regional (8%), national (3%) and international (2 subjects), the others were classified as sedentary. The sport-active subjects scored significantly (p<0.001) higher sociometric acceptance and sociometric status and lower sociometric rejection (p<0.05) than the sedentary ones. However, no significant correlations were found between sport-engagement variables and the sociometric ones.

Conclusions: The presented results can be regarded as preliminary only and call for conducting the study on a larger cohort and to include more psychosocial variables.