Psychological correlates of sport and leisure physical activity participation among Botswana youths

While most of the existing research on psychological factors of youth in sport and physical activity has been done with US and Western-European middle class youth and children, little is known about other populations outside these contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among participant motivation, perceived social influence, achievement goal orientations, perceived competence, and the involvement of Botswana youths in sport and leisure physical activity. Participants were junior and senior secondary (high) school youths from urban and rural Botswana (N = 903), aged 13--18 years. Participants included youths involved in competitive sport, recreational sports, and non-participants. All participants were asked to complete a set of survey instruments. Multivariate analysis of variance, correlations, and factor analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between the factors. Results indicated youths participated in sport to improve skills, get exercise, go to a higher level of competition, learn new skills, and win. Competitive sport participants perceived these reasons as more important than their non-participating counterparts. Teachers and coaches were perceived as the most interested social agents in the sport participation of youths, with competitive sport participants rating them higher than recreational and nonparticipants. Results also showed a positive bias towards rural small community influence on sport participation.