Parental Involvement in Sport: Improving the Quality of Children’s Sport Experiences and Wellbeing

Project Aim: To develop and implement an intervention to help parents maximise the sport experiences of their children.

Research Outline: The psychological benefits of children participation in organised sport are numerous including improvements in self-confidence, emotional control, life satisfaction, resilience, teamwork and social wellbeing. Despite being developmentally relevant, these benefits depend on social factors. One key factor is the way parents interact with their child athlete and other sport agents. Parents play an important role in socialising children into sport, providing feedback, support and encouragement; however, parents can cause stress and anxiety by placing excessive demands on the child. Considering the extent of children sport participation, the quality of parents’ involvement in their children’s sport can have a significant developmental and societal impact. Hence, sport organisations need to be pro-active in developing parental educational programmes as a form of widening their duty of care of young athletes and support parents in improving their children’s sport experiences and wellbeing.
The purpose of this research is to develop, implement and test a parent educational programme to enhance the quality of parents’ interactions within sport, the research programme will be organised around three main objectives. First, a systematic review to identify the most important antecedents and consequences of parental involvement in sport will be conducted. Second, a longitudinal study with a sample of parents will be performed. Third, an intervention will be developed and implemented in a group of parents of young athletes