The correlation of playing competitive sports at college level and self esteem are measured. Subjects were given the Barksdale self esteem questionnaire to fill out and levels of self esteem are measured by scores out of one hundred.
The subjects are then separated into categories determined by gender and whether they played sports at the college level. The results indicated that the elite athletes have a higher self esteem than non athletes. The survey also revealed that women have a slightly higher self esteem than men. These findings agree with our hypothesis that athletes will have a higher level of self esteem than non athletes will.
Self Esteem in Athletes Compared to Non-AthletesSelf esteem is defined as “the esteem or good opinion of ones self; Vanity”( Patterson p. 201). It is Defined by The New Websters Dictionary as “ ones evaluation of one’s worth as a person based on an assessment of the qualities that make up the self-concept” ( Shaffer G-9). Every one has known someone with fantastically high self esteem and someone with extremely low self esteem. It always seems to be the football captain or head cheer leader with high self esteem and the geeky computer nerd with the low self esteem. This research has set out to prove or disprove this theory.
This paper will discuss in detail the method used to collect the information, the results, and the summary and conclusions of the research. It is our hypothesis that athlete’s will score higher on the questionnaire than non-athlete’s. Self esteem, as stated earlier, is a very popular term which seems to be studied a lot. In reviewing many journal articles on the topic it was found that, indeed their was a lot of research on self esteem but not research in the area of athletics and self esteem. The research that we chose to take a closer look at that directly linked to our research was a journal in the journal of college student development called; A comparison of college athletic participants and non-participants on self esteem. As well as looking at that research we also referred to the Encyclopaedia of human intelligence and an interesting article about exercise and cognitive functioning.
The purpose of this research then is to find out of levels of self esteem differ in athletes and non athletes. The hypothesis drawn was that athletes would prove to have a higher overall average of self esteem when compared to non athletes. The null hypothesis is that their will be no difference between the two groups. Goals of this research are to satisfy some curiosity in the area and maybe dispel of some long reaching stereo types.
It was decided that the goal would best be reached through a questionnaire given to people to fill out that would evaluate their self esteem. After going through many the Barksdale self esteem evaluation no. 69 , it was decided on as being the most thorough and the one most pertaining to he research. Some questions at the end were added asking for age, sex, and whether or not they play competitive sports. These questions were added so we could separate them onto the respective categories: athlete/non athlete.
Our control group would be the group that does not play on a sports team. The athletes would be compared to them. The questionaries were handed out randomly. The people in our control group were selected randomly from the public. We simply found people and asked them to complete the self esteem survey.
The athletes were not selected randomly. We chose to use our resources as current athletes. We used our fellow team mates from the hockey, basketball, and soccer teams. We tried to limit the age to people between the age of 18 and 25. Out of one hundred people surveyed, roughly seventy percent were non athletes while only thirty percent were athletes.
The split also applied when looking at male and female participants, females being the larger group. Self esteem was assessed with the Barksdale self esteem evaluation no. 69. The Barksdale evaluation consisted of twenty five questions measuring feelings or perceptions about themselves.
Questions were rated .
