Extracurricular Activity Participation and the Acquisition of Developmental Assets: Differences Between Involved and Noninvolved Canadian High School Students

Examining the Importance of Intentionally Structuring the Youth Sport Context to Facilitate Positive Youth Development

“…For example, Linver et al (2009) compared youth activity patterns in combination with youth development outcomes and found that youth who participated only in sports had more positive outcomes compared with those who had little or no involvement in organized activities but less positive outcomes compared with those who participated in sports plus other activities. Similar results were found by Forneris et al (2015) whereby youth who participated in a combination of both sport and nonsport activities, as well as sport-only activities, scored higher on several developmental assets compared to youth not involved in extracurricular activities.…”

“…Sport is a highly valued social activity that youth are motivated to engage in, acting as an ideal vehicle to attract youth (Le Menestrel, Bruno, & Christian, 2002). Researchers have found that youth who engage in sport or a combination of sport and other extracurricular activities yield higher levels of positive development experiences and outcomes compared to youth involved in other nonsport extracurricular activities, suggesting that sport participation may be associated with a greater number of positive developmental outcomes (Forneris, Camiré, & Williamson, 2015;Larson, Hansen, & Moneta, 2006;Linver, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009;Zarrett et al, 2008). For example, Linver et al (2009) compared youth activity patterns in combination with youth development outcomes and found that youth who participated only in sports had more positive outcomes compared with those who had little or no involvement in organized activities but less positive outcomes compared with those who participated in sports plus other activities.…”

Psychological Engagement and Behavioral Activity Participation As Predictors of Positive Youth Development

“…These findings suggest that not only was psychological engagement an important predictor of PYD, but it was so regardless of the activity type. These findings were in line with past research that has failed to find consistent, systematic differences in the benefits of sports or non-sport activities (Agans et al, 2014;Forneris et al, 2014;Vandell et al, 2015). It also adds to research by Larson and colleagues (e.g., Larson et al, 2006) examining structured and unstructured activity types and youth development.…”

“…Relatedly, Zarrett et al (2009) found that a profile of participation in both sports and other activities was most associated with PYD among their fifth through seventh grade participants. Other research that has examined different types of structured activities and PYD in adolescence has not clearly indicated benefits of sports versus non-sport activities (e.g., Agans et al, 2014;Forneris, Camiré, & Williamson, 2014). Given past attention to these activity types, in the current study we planned to determine whether our final model differed for sports and non-sport activities.…”

Impact of Sport-related Games on High School Students’ Communication Skills

“…Parallel to this situation, Turkish Educational System is also largely driven by laws concerning proper evaluation of leisure time in children and young people because extracurricular activities play a vital role in children and adolescents in terms of academic performance, problem behaviour and advancement in social skills in addition to dropout, delinquency, cognitive performance, alcohol and drug use. In this context, studies particularly, refer to participating in such well-established activities which are associated with enhanced academic school performance (Fredricks, & Eccles, 2006;Fredricks, & Eccles, 2010;Fredricks, 2012;Knifsend, & Graham, 2012;Metsapelto, & Pulkkinen, 2012, Jones et al, 2014, lesser problematic behaviours (Simoncini, & Caltabiono, 2012), relatively more remarkable social skills (Howie et al, 2010) and various socioemotional outcomes (Metsapelto, & Pulkkinen, 2012;Shiah, 2012;Guèvremont, 2014), developmental assets and school engagement (Forneris et al, 2015), high stress tolerance (Bland et al, 2014), lower dropout rates (Mahoney, & Cairns, 1997;Mahoney, 2000), more considerable cognitive performance (Cornejoet al, 2014) less school-related delinquencies (Himelfarb, 2014) and lowered alcohol and drug use (Fredricks, & Eccles, 2010;Guèvremont, 2014).…”