More than child's play: Variable- and pattern-centered approaches for examining effects of sports participation on youth development.

Abstract

The authors used data from Grades 5 through 7 of the longitudinal 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development to assess relations among sports participation, other out-of-school-time (OST) activities, and indicators of youth development. They used a mixture of variable- and pattern-centered analyses aimed at disentangling different features of participation (i.e., intensity, breadth). The benefits of sports participation were found to depend, in part, on specific combinations of multiple activities in which youths participated along with sports. In particular, participation in a combination of sports and youth development programs was related to positive youth development and youth contribution, even after controlling for the total time youths spent in OST activities and their sports participation duration. Adolescents' total time spent participating in OST activities, duration of participation in sports, and activity participation pattern each explained a unique part of the variance in some of the indicators of youth functioning. These findings suggest the need for future research to simultaneously assess multiple indices of OST activity participation.

Character Development within Youth Development Programs: Exploring Multiple Dimensions of Activity Involvement

“…For instance, the use of person-centered approaches to cluster youth into meaningful OST program profiles would provide insight into the impact of participation in multiple activities simultaneously on the development of specific indicators of PYD, including character attributes (Zarrett et al, 2009). Finally, whereas we controlled for several individual and family characteristics to reduce the risk of omitted variable bias, it is possible, through selection effects, that youth who are highly engaged in OST programs are also more likely to demonstrate positive development in other contexts of their lives as well when compared to less engaged youth.…”

The Camp Setting for Promoting Youth Physical Activity: Systematic Observations of Summer Day Camps

“…In turn, youth participation in organized OST activities such as sports, after-school community programs (YD programs), and extracurricular activities (school-based), has been linked with multiple indicators of positive functioning (e.g., Mahoney, Vandell, Simpkins, & Zarrett, 2009;Zarrett, Fay, Li, et al, 2009;Zarrett, Fay, Peltz, et al, 2007) including physical health (e.g., lower rates of obesity; Mahoney, Lord & Carryl, 2005a;Vandell, Pierce & Dadisman, et al, 2005). For example, Mahoney et al (2005a) tracked a sample of disadvantaged children over a 3 year period (ages 5 to 8 years old) and found that, after controlling for earlier measures of BMI and demographic factors, those who participated in after-school programs (ASPs) showed less marked increases in BMI and significantly lower rates of obesity than similar children who did not participate in ASPs.…”

Special Section Introduction: Thriving in Context: Findings from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development

“…The goal of this special section is to provide initial research about such context-specific instances of the thriving process. The articles in this special section focus on the two contexts that, together, involve the greatest investment of youth time, the school and out-of-school time sports programs (e.g., Balsano et al 2009;Elmore 2009;Zarrett et al 2009). …”

“…1 may be used to summarize the contributions to this special section. These contributions advance research about youth thriving by exploring the features of the process that exist within two of the key contexts of youth development, school and outof-school-time (OST) programs involving youth participation in sports; such participation is the major instance of OST activity among youth (e.g., Balsano et al 2009;Zarrett et al 2009). Across the articles in this special section, the reported data provide an important means to appraise the nature of the similarities or differences in thriving across key contexts of youth.…”