Abstract
To ensure sport provides an opportunity for positive youth development for children of all body weights, there is a need to fully understand the social context that may shape the recreational or community-based sport experience. The purpose of this study was to examine how parents and children view children’s abilities in sport, and how children view potential teammates based on weight. Child-parent dyads (N=102) drawn from multiple sport programs completed measures of self-efficacy, other-efficacy, and perceived characteristics of a potential teammate described in a vignette as either tall or heavy. The majority of child participants self-identified as female (51 %), Caucasian (81%) and as normal or under-weight (96%). A paired analysis between children’s self-efficacy (M = 8.30) and parents’ other-efficacy (M = 6.93) revealed that, relative to their children, parents were less confident in their child’s sport abilities ( p < .001). Multivariate analysis of variance revealed differences in how children perceived the heavy athlete or tall athlete described in the vignette (V = 0.42, F(14,73) = 3.76, p < .001). Decomposing this result with discriminant analysis revealed self-confidence, work ethic, and friendships to be the strongest contributors to the difference. These initial findings suggest that children and parents differ in their perceptions of children’s sporting abilities and that body weight may influence how children value potential teammates, both of which may impact the sport experience for children. Future research is needed to better understand how others perceptions are related to differences in self-perceptions across body weights.Acknowledgments: The project is supported by a Sport Participation Research Initiative (SPRI) grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC 862-2011-0006) and Sport Canada.