Youth Perceptions of Sport-Confidence

Sport-confidence is an important construct that is often missed during physical activity interventions in youth. Male and female children might display differences in sport-confidence that influences their activity levels. The purpose of this study is to assess any association between sport-confidence and gender in elementary school and middle-school children. All 286 children {(boys [ES: n = 71, age = 8±1 years; MS: n = 63, 11±1 years]; girls [ES: n = 67, 7±1 years; MS: n = 85, 11±1 years])} completed the Physical Literacy Assessment for Youth-Self Questionnaire. Separate chi-square tests of the association were used to evaluate the association between gender and sport-confidence among elementary (grades K-4) and middle-school (grades 5-8) children because of varying injury and participation rates for these groups, for each relevant question with a significance set at p ≤ 0.05. For elementary school children, there were no significant associations between genders and sport-confidence (p > 0.05). In middle-school children, there were significant associations detected for learning new skills (φ = 0.12; p = 0.031), perception of skill (φ = 0.12; p = 0.054), confidence in activity (φ = 0.17; p = 0.035), and being the best in the class (φ = 0.15; p = 0.048) between genders and sport-confidence. For all results, boys displayed more sport-confidence than girls. Education for key stakeholders about the importance of including sport-confidence in physical activity interventions is integral in promoting life-long activity, specifically in middle-school girls.