Psychological Factors That Impact the Drop-Out Rate in Adolescent Sports

Children are dropping out of sport at alarming rates. With the highest numbers of dropout occurring between the ages of ten and seventeen, the focus of this research is on the drop-out rates of adolescents from sport. Athletic participation has been linked to positive academic performance, key development of leadership skills, and increased engagement in the community. The research that has been conducted related to sport persistence has had a greater focus on examining factors related to the physical domain. Attention is now beginning to shift however, and researchers are looking outside the physical domain and analyzing sport attrition more through sociological and psychological domains. The purpose of this research is to conduct a literary analysis on the psychological factors that impact the drop-out rate of adolescents from sport with adolescents being defined as children between the ages of ten and seventeen. Research in this domain is fairly limited; however numerous psychological theories have recently emerged as framework for conducting research as it relates to participation and drop-out in adolescent sports. These include self-determination theory, basic needs theory, achievement goal theory, and leisure constraints theory. The developmental model of sport participation is also a tool that is widely used to study sport persistence and drop-out. Foundationally based on psychology, this literature analysis was constructed to explore drop-out factors related to adolescent sport with the intent to collect data that either supports or disputes the relational connections between sport attrition or persistence. These relationships include but are not limited to the athlete/athlete, athlete/coach, athlete/parent, and athlete/self