Positive youth development through sport : investigating the impact of key social agents and life skills transfer

With youth sport considered a unique environment for promoting positive youth development (PYD), this thesis endeavoured to investigate PYD through sport more closely. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the programme of research involved five studies aimed to synthesise the current quantitative PYD through sport literature, investigate the motivational climate created by coaches, parents, and peers and their relationship to life skills development, the transfer of life skills to other life domains, and acquiring the views of current youth sport coaches. Study 1 systematically reviewed the quantitative PYD through sport literature. After identifying and screening articles, 57 studies were retained for analysis. This analysis generated a number of key findings, including the lack of papers measuring life skills transfer, a fundamental element of PYD through sport. Other important findings included a high number of articles adopting a cross-sectional research design, most research taking place in North America, and a total of 100 different measures being used to assess PYD through sport variables. This review assesses the reasons for these findings, and other findings, and offers recommendations for future research. The information gathered from this review provided the information and impetus for the wider programme of research. Study 2 investigated the relationships between the coach, parent, and peer motivational climates (mastery and ego) and participants’ life skills development (teamwork, goal setting, social skills, emotional skills, problem solving and decision making, leadership, time management, and interpersonal communication). Data from 308 youth sport participants suggested that a peer-created mastery-climate was key, making the largest positive contribution to all eight life skills and total life skills. Coaches and parents also contributed positively to some life skills and total life skills. A parent-created ego-climate had the greatest negative influence on life skills development; whereas, a coach-created ego-climate contributed also made a negative contribution. Contrary to expectations, a peer-created ego-climate contributed positively to three life skills and total life skills. Next, studies 3 and 4 were conducted to develop and provided initial validity and reliability evidence for a new scale that assesses life skills transfer from sport to other life domains. Study 3 involved a review of the literature investigating life skills transfer and resulted in the development of 88 initial items representing six key transfer areas: school/ education, home/ family, community, social settings, employment, and other life domains. During this study, the content validity of the items was endorsed by 10 experts and a pilot study conducted with 72 participants provided further validity evidence for the scale and an assessment of its use in practice. Study 4 included data from 321 youth sport participants and refined the scale further using the results of factor analysis and descriptive statistics. Collectively, these studies provided initial evidence for the validity and reliability of the Life Skills Scale for Sport – Transfer Scale (LSSS-TS), a measure which can be used by researchers and practitioners to assess participants’ perceived life skills transfer from sport to other domains. Overall, the findings from this programme of research suggest that more quantitative analysis is required to assess key PYD outcomes through sport with the requirement for more valid and reliable measures. Contributing to the research literature, this thesis also demonstrated that a mastery-climate emanating from coaches, parents, and peers combined help to develop participants’ life skills development through sport with peers deemed to be the most important contributor to this development. A major contribution to the research literature is the development of a valid and reliable measure of life skills transfer. This allows for future research to assess life skills transfer in more detail. Finally, this thesis contributes to the research literature as it provides greater in-depth information of how UK coaches understand the antecedents and consequences of PYD through sport