The Relationship between Badminton Player's Self-Reported Health and Specialization

[[abstract]]Badminton is a kind of good exercise to improve players’ physical and mental health, and appropriate for all kinds of people. Short Form-36 (SF-36) is a form recognized by World Health Organization to access people’s health. To review the past badminton’s research, most of them were to improve skill and tactics to win the game, and the satisfactions of badminton court. There were few researches to use SF-36 as a tool to study badminton. The objectives of this research were to realize the relationships between the specialization of badminton participants and their self-assessed health by SF-36. Four hundred and eighty people were selected in this cross-sectional, descriptive study by using a structured questionnaire. Four hundred and eighteen valid data were used to analyze as the results, the valid corresponding rate was 87%. The surveys were conducted during the period of February to March 15th 2010. The results of this study were the followings: 1.Most surveyed badminton participants were assessed as the primary level of specializations; the percentage was 56.7%, 32.1%, 9.3% and 1.9% of the surveyed ones were graded as the middle level, new, and the highest level of specialization, separately. 2.The relationships between gender and age of badminton participants and their self-assessed health: (1)Different surveyed badminton participants’ genders had different physical functioning (PF) and vitality (VT). (2)Different surveyed badminton participants’ ages had different role limitations due to emotional problems (RE), vitality (VT), mental health (MH), social functioning (SF), and general health (GH). 3. The relationships between the specialization of badminton participants and the self-assessed health: (1) The higher degree of the surveyed badminton participants’ specializations, the better conditions of their role limitations due to emotional problems (RE), vitality (VT), mental health (MH), social functioning (SF), bodily pain (BP) and general health (GH) . (2) The higher degree of the surveyed male badminton participants’ specializations, the better conditions of their role limitations due to emotional problems (RE), vitality (VT), mental health (MH), social functioning (SF), bodily pain (BP) and general health (GH). (3) The higher degree of the surveyed female badminton participants’ specializations, the better conditions of their general health (GH). 4. To relieve pressure and to relax emotion, to improve physical health, and to maintain good health condition were the top three graded surveyed badminton participant’s motivations. 5. No time, heavy works and lack of accompanions were the top three graded surveyed badminton participant’s constraints. According to the results of this research, we can encourage people to play badminton to improve their health