Positive youth development through sport : investigating the impact of key social agents and life skills transfer (original) (raw)

With youth sport considered a unique environment for promoting positive youth development (PYD), this thesis endeavoured to investigate PYD through sport more closely. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the programme of research involved five studies aimed to synthesise the current quantitative PYD through sport literature, investigate the motivational climate created by coaches, parents, and peers and their relationship to life skills development, the transfer of life skills to other life domains, and acquiring the views of current youth sport coaches. Study 1 systematically reviewed the quantitative PYD through sport literature. After identifying and screening articles, 57 studies were retained for analysis. This analysis generated a number of key findings, including the lack of papers measuring life skills transfer, a fundamental element of PYD through sport. Other important findings included a high number of articles adopting a cross-sectional research design, most research taki...