The following study was conducted on social welfare facility youth athletes who discontinued further advancement in becoming a professional athlete. It is focused on technically describing the process of young athletes' mid-way give up and their socia...
The following study was conducted on social welfare facility youth athletes who discontinued further advancement in becoming a professional athlete. It is focused on technically describing the process of young athletes' mid-way give up and their social psychological status during the process of decision making. The research subjects are as follows.
First, what is the main factor of facility youth's mid-way give up on sports?
Second, what is their social·psychological status during the process of making such a decision.
The following study was conducted by gathering data by in-depth interviews, descriptive surveys, documents and etc. of 3 social welfare facility youth athletes whom all have planned to become a professional athlete. The collected data was analyzed by constant comparative method, cross examined by members, discussed by peers, and analyzed from various angles to reassure the purity of data.
The research summary are as follows.
First, the main factors of discontinuing further advancement of becoming a professional athlete are uncertainty of future, economic challenges, unjust treatment amongst peers, and low self esteem due to the lack of emotional support.
Second, excessive training did not play an important role as one of the factors of giving up sports. This contradicts previous research that indicated hard training as one of the main reasons of physical institution athletes' give up of sports.(Choi, Kwan Young, 2003)
Third, economic difficulties effected the decision making of giving up sports as a career. The athletes were supported most of their needed fees from their schools, but this kind of 'special consideration' only made the youth athletes feel uncomfortable and burdened.
Fourth, low self esteem due to the lack of emotional support was the greatest factor of giving up sports. The parents' level of academic education is closely related to their child's academic performances, and the parent becomes a role model for the child. Social welfare facility youth' low self esteem may be the result of lack of role models in comparison to general youth, and they are less driven for achievement of goals.
Fifth, unlike general teenagers who have parents as role models to reach out to in times of difficulty, facility youth cannot turn to their parents for such support and therefore, need mentors to guide them through their troubles and crisis. But lack of such mentors makes teenagers vulnerable to compromise with reality when faced with a crisis, and eventually choose the easy way out by simply giving up sports and discontinuing efforts to become a professional athlete.