Vinsamlegast notið þetta auðkenni þegar þið vitnið til verksins eða tengið í það: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/20622
Frá og með seinni hluta tuttugustu aldar hefur íþróttaþátttaka vaxið það ört að
fræðimenn hafa talað um „íþróttavæðingu samfélagsins“. Þessi aukna þátttaka á
ekki síst við í íþróttum barna og ungmenna, sem eru í dag stærstur hluti þátttakenda
í skipulögðu íþróttastarfi. Ástæður almennrar þátttöku ungs fólks í skipulögðu
íþróttastarfi má að einhverju leyti rekja til jákvæðra hugmynda almennings
um slíkt starf þar sem litið er á íþróttafélög sem hluta af uppeldisstofnunum samfélagsins
og því heppilegan vettvang fyrir samfélagslega aðlögun barna og ungmenna.
En samhliða þessari þróun hefur fjölbreytni aukist í íþróttastarfi þar sem
athæfi af sífellt fleira tagi fellur undir hefðbundna íþróttaskilgreiningu. Athæfi sem
ekki endilega mætir væntingum um jákvæða þróun uppeldis fyrir ungt fólk.
Þessari grein er ætlað að varpa ljósi á íþróttaiðkun íslenskra ungmenna, skoða
þróun skipulagðs íþróttastarfs og sérstaklega að skoða hverjir eru líklegastir til að
taka þátt í íþróttum eftir ólíkum leiðum hér á landi. Greinin byggir á viðamiklum
gögnum Rannsókna og greiningar á ungu fólki með megináherslu á könnun sem
gerð var vorið 2014 meðal nemenda í 8.–10. bekk allra grunnskóla á Íslandi. Niðurstöður
sýna að mun fleiri ungmenni stunda nú skipulagt íþróttastarf en árið 1992.
Ennfremur hefur hlutfall þeirra sem æfa oft tvöfaldast hjá piltum og nærri þrefaldast
hjá stúlkum á þessum árum. Íþróttaþátttaka í íþróttafélögum er mest meðal
nemenda í 7. bekk en eftir það dregur jafnt og þétt úr þátttöku ungs fólks í skipulögðu
íþróttastarfi. Þátttakan eykst aftur á móti í íþróttum utan íþróttafélaga.
Niðurstöðurnar benda einnig til þess að ýmsir félagslegir þættir hafi áhrif á hvort
og með hvaða hætti ungmenni stunda íþróttir. Þættir eins og kyn, aldur, búseta,
heimilisgerð, hvatning foreldra, tengsl við vini og íþróttatengd virðing vina, tengjast
allir íþróttaþátttöku ungmenna. Í þessu samhengi er mikilvægt að líta til þess að
félagslegar hindranir geta haldið ákveðnum hópum ungs fólks frá uppeldisvænu
tómstundastarfi á borð við skipulagt íþróttastarf.
´The sportization of society´ has influenced a massive increase in sport participation,
especially among youths. Young people therefore represent the largest
proportion of sport participants, especially in formal sports. This is largely
due to the impact of the late nineteenth century ideas of sport as possessing
positive developmental benefits for participants and for society as a whole.
These ideas have become the general viewpoint to youth sport in most Western
societies, finding their way into Icelandic society in the late twentieth century.
But parallel to the increase in sport participation, the diversity of opportunities
to partake in different sports in different contexts has increased extensively.
The increased diversity of modern sport forms has illustrated that all sports
cannot be put under one and the same label in relation to the developmental
outcomes of sport participation. Some sport forms are better equipped than
others to contribute to potential developmental outcomes for their participants.
Research on Icelandic youth sport shows that while various positive developmental
outcomes can be attributed to participation in formal sport in sport
clubs, they do not necessarily exist in informal sport, outside sport clubs.
Informal sports are more individualistic and emergent in nature and seem to
lack some of the social contextual elements that reside in formal sport. Therefore,
it is important to disassemble the traditional definition of sport and to
differentiate between different kinds of sports forms and contexts. By doing so
we can analyze the developmental outcomes of sport participation more
thoroughly and accurately.
Since prior research has consistently shown the benefits of formal sport participation
for Icelandic youth, the focus of this paper is primarily on formal youth
sport. This paper seeks to investigate participation trends in formal youth sport
in Iceland, and further, to identify some of the social characteristics of participants
in different forms of sport, i.e. among those who participate in formal
sport in sport clubs, those who only participate in informal sport outside sport
clubs, and those who do not take part in any sporting activity. This paper
further analyzes whether social stratifications exist in regards to participation
in youth sport. The study is built on extensive questionnaire data on the
population of Icelandic youth from 1992 to 2014.
The findings show that adolescents’ sport participation has increased considerably
in formal sport in this period. More adolescents take part in formal
sport, and they practice more. In fact, the percentage of those who partake four
times a week or more has increased twofold for boys and almost threefold for
girls in this period. Boys are more likely to participate than girls, although the
gender gap is slowly diminishing. Participation rates in formal sport are highest
among seventh grade children and steadily decrease from that point, although
participation rates increase in informal sport outside sport clubs from that
point on. Those adolescents who stop participating in formal sport do not
become physically inactive but seem to shift to informal sport
The findings further show that various social characteristics affect the sport
participation of adolescents. Participation in formal sport decreases with age,
while the relationship is reversed for informal sport, with girls being more
likely to partake in informal sport than boys. The findings further show, as the
logistic regression revealed, that social stratification factors like parents’ education
and family income did not show a siginificant relationship with sport
participation. On the other hand, factors like living with both parents, having
parental encouragement for sport, and being in a close relationship with friends
interested in sport, all showed a positive relationship with participation in sport. The relationship is by far strongest for parental encouragement, where
those who receive encouragement for sport participation from their parents
are over three times more likely to participate in formal sport, and almost twice
as likely to participate in informal sport, than those who do not receive such
encouragement. The findings further suggest that there are benefits to participation
in formal sport for adolescents’ positive development.
This paper is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the social characteristics
of youth sport participation in Iceland. Rather, it illustrates the importance
for further analysis to differentiate between different sport forms and
different sports in order to shed further light on the positive developmental
outcomes of sport participation for adolescents. Such research is of extreme
importance, especially if social stratification factors prevent some adolescents
from participating in a supportive and educational sporting environment,
such as within formal youth sport.
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