Literature Review

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Annotated Bibliography

Purpose Statement: The research aims at finding out different kinds of reasons behind the phenomenon that a great percentage of young athletes choose to quit sports before they have the opportunity to become professional athletes in U.S. An increasing number of children and young athletes choose or get forced to quit sports. The reasons can be various, including physical, mental and social factors. The research will use different sources to describe and explain the reasons behind this phenomenon.

Source:

Miner, Julianna W. “Why 70 Percent of Kinds Quit Sports by Age 13?” The Washington Post, June. 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/06/01/why-70-percent-of-kids-quit-sports-by-age-13/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ec3c11653822. Accessed 20 Oct. 2018.

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The author, researcher at The Washington Post, used the data from the National Alliance for Youth Sports to illustrate the cultural and social reasons why a majority of children quit sports by age 13. She found that the most important factor is that the cultural pressure

which forces children to specialize and achieve at the highest possible level made children find playing sports not fun anymore. (Miner, line 39-40) Additionally, the financial pressure forced many parents have no choice but to make their children quit sports. (Miner, line 57-60)

However, this source has several limitations. Firstly, the source only considered the data of children under age 13. Secondly, the source paid much of its attention on the social and cultural factors. It lacks the research of the disadvantages of sports industry and fails to consider the different situations of different sports.

Source:

Wallace, Kelly. “How to Make Your Kid Hate Sports without Really Trying?” CNN, 21 Jan, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/21/health/kids-youth-sports-parents/index.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2018.

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The author, journalist at CNN, quoted an example of recruiting young athletes even in eighth-grade children to state that the early recruiting by colleges did a great harm to the interests of parents and children playing sports. (Wallace, line 3-4) Then she quoted several interviews with some parents to illustrate reasons of why kids giving up sports. Firstly, the injuries that caused by overuse in youth sports contributed much to decrease the interest in continuing playing sports. (Wallace, line 60-61) Secondly, the false definition of success by coaches and parents pushes children to focus more on victory rather than enjoying the

game.

The limitations of this source are various. Firstly, this source only cited interviews and author’s own explanation to illustrate the question rather than using solid data. The lack of official data weakened the validity of the research. Secondly, the lack of research into student athletes after 13 years old weakened the comprehensiveness of the research.

Source:

Mudede, Charles. “Why The Overrepresentation of Black Americans in Professional Sports IS Not a Good Thing.” The Stranger.Com, 25 Sep, 2017, https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/09/25/25432524/why-the-over-representation-of-black-americans-in-professional-sports-is-not-a-good-thing. Accessed 20 Oct. 2018.

The author, journalist at the Stranger, used data of how many percentages of people are African Americans in different industries, including abnormal high percentages in sports industries, to illustrate the overrepresentation of black Americans in pro sports. (Mudede, line 1-4) Then, he quoted some history data about the percentages of African Americans to support his argument and state the disadvantages of this phenomenon, which includes the harm it caused to the decrease of the attendance of young white children. (Mudede, line 13-23)

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The limitations of this source are apparent. Firstly, the first point of this source, the overrepresentation of black Americans in different industries, is irrelevant to the research.

Only one of the consequences of this phenomenon is relevant. Secondly, the author failed to quote useful and powerful data. He only collected the data from NBA and NFL, which weakened the validity of the research.

Source:

Merkel, Donna L. “Youth sport: positive and negative impact on young athletes.” Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, 31 May, 2013, 4: 151-160.

The author, the researcher from Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, used data from the National Center for Sports Safety to illustrate the positive and negative impacts of youth sports on young athletes. The part of the negative impacts consisted several relevant supporting points to solidify the research. Firstly, the extreme high rate of young athlete getting injured rose beyond 75%, which caused great concern for their parents. (Negative Impact, line 4-10) Therefore, an increasing number of parents choose to make their children quit sports. Secondly, the quality of coaches is not satisfying. Because of the huge impacts coaches had on young athletes, many parents rather their children to quit. (Negative Impact, line 174-178) The author then briefly introduced some psychological and social impacts.

This source is great for the research. It contained a great deal of useful information and provided a comprehensive explanation and support for this research.

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Source:

Rosenwald, Michael S. “Youth Sports Participation is Up Slightly, But Many Kids are Still Left Behind.” The Washington Post, 17 May, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/05/17/youth-sports-participation-is-up-slightly-but-many-kids-are-still-left-behind/?utm_term=.373d17561256. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

The author, reporter from the Washington Post, used the data about the participation levels in different sports from the Project Play Summit to state his description and conclusion about the problem that an increasing number of children left sports in U.S. (Rosenwald, line 11-20) Then, he used the chart as support to give his own explanation of this phenomenon, which included several different reasons. Firstly, the increasingly high cost of youth sports. Secondly, the rise of e-sports has drawn much attention of children. Thirdly, specializing in just one sports forced many children to quit other sports. (Rosenwald, line 21-45)

The data that the author used is quite solid, since it was from a official sports commit. And author also provided three valid and concise reasons for the research. However, the data he used only focused on children between 6 to 12. Therefore, it is not representative enough to be a solid source.

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Source:

Moses, Edwin. “The Importance of Retaining Girls in Sports.” HUFFPOST, 13 Aug, 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-moses/retaining-girls-in-sports_b_7971912.html. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

The author, Chairman of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, used the data form the Women’s Sports Foundation to describe that girls drop out of sports twice as often as boys and the reasons behind this phenomenon are various. (Moses, line1-5) Firstly, the social stigma, like the sexual harassment in youth sports keep girls from playing sports. Secondly, the the lack of positive role models in women’s sports doesn’t provide enough motivation for girls to play sports. Thirdly, the lack of access, transportation issues and higher cost stop more and more girls playing sports.

This source provided a new angle to conduct this research, looking at this phenomenon from girls’ prospective. It provided some new reasons for this question, like the sexual harassment. However, the source paid much attention on how to fix this problem rather than analyze the reasons.

Source:

O’Sullivan, John. “Why Kids Quit Sports?” Coaching, Problems in Youth Sports, Sports Parenting, 15 May, 2015, https://changingthegameproject.com/why-kids-quit-sports/. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

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The author, the writer from the Sports Parenting, used a conversation between him and his son to state that many children choose to quit sports for different psychological reasons. (O’Sullivan, line 1-13) Then he quoted data from a study for George Washington University and a study by the Josephean Institute to illustrate five main reasons behind it, including it’s no longer fun, lost of the ownership of the experience, no playing time, being afraid to make mistakes and feeling of disrespect. After each reason, he provided solutions to solve the problems.

The source cited much useful information from different professional studies conducted by different institutes. The data he used is valid and helpful. However, this source only focused on the metal reasons of this phenomenon. Lack of research about the social, financial and cultural problems weakened the validity of this source.

Source:

Hinch, Will. “Why Do Adults Quit Sports?” Pitcher, 26 Oct, 2016, https://blog.pitchero.com/why-do-adults-quit-sports. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

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The author, the writer of the Pitcher.com, quoted the study conducting by Harvard University in 2015, which interviewed over 2,500 US adults over 18 to analyze the reasons why adults quit sports. The study gave several main reasons. Firstly, the age. The participation rate dropped dramatically after adults hit 26. (Hinch, line 15-20) Secondly,

more than half of those interviewed claimed that health reasons were behind the lack of action. (Hinch, line 21) Thirdly, the lacking of time to participate in sport was significant. (Hinch, line 28-29) The author also mentioned other reasons behind this phenomenon.

This source provided valid information about the reasons why adults quit sports, which is the missing part of many sources as the research is not only about children under 13. Therefore, this source is great add up to the research. However, the research aims at the young athletes before pro sports. This source aimed much on normal adults rather than student athletes.

Source:

Cohen-Sander, Roni. “Why Teens Quit Sports.” Raising 21st Century Teens: Issues & Solutions, http://wt.dlisys.com/authoropolis/AU123470_full_copy.asp. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

The author, a clinical psychologist, used her own experience and knowledge to illustrate that many kinds of psychological reasons can contribute to children quitting sports. The author focus mostly on mental reasons. Firstly, the activity itself loses its luster. (Cohen-Sander, line 50) Secondly, some children don’t have the personality to enjoy the intense competition. (Cohen-Sander, line 77-78) Thirdly, getting along with teammates isn’t easy for many teammates. Many children suffer from teasing, exclusion and rejection. (Cohen-Sander, line 93-94) Last but not the least, the pressure from coaches and parents stop children to have fun in sports.

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This source focused mainly on children’s psychological experience in youth sports and how those affect the participation of children. The information in this source can be a great support to increase the validity in the psychological part of the research. However, this source failed to mention financial, cultural and social factors that can cause the low participation rate of youth sports.

Source:

Galletta, Alexandra. “Why I Quit The Sport I Loved in College.” The Tab.Com, Oct, 2016, https://thetab.com/us/cornell/2016/04/26/many-talented-athletes-quit-sports-college-3160. Accessed 20 Oct, 2018.

The author, writer at The Tab, used an interview she did with a previous member of the Women’s Squash team in Cornell to illustrate the reasons why student-athletes choose to quit sports in college. As she mentioned, the imbalance between sports and life in college is so challenging and forced many student-athletes to quit. The strict requirement of coaches in college can be a big challenge for students to overcome and get their lives in order. (Galletta, line 32-40)

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This source is not a valid and reliable source for this research. The reasons are as follow. Firstly, the information in this source is only the interview the author did with the athlete, data of only one person is not valid. Secondly, the author only stated one reason of this problem, which is that student-athletes need to get their lives in order. However, she failed

to conduct a research on social, cultural and financial reasons.

Source:

Butcher, Janice, et al. “Withdrawal from Competitive Youth Sport: A Retrospective Ten-year Study.” Journal of Sport Behavior, Jun, 2002, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p145. 19p.

The authors, writers for the Journal of Sport Behavior, used their own research method to collect data from more than 1,000 grade 10 students to illustrate the different types, reasons of withdrawal in youth sports. They considered the different withdrawal patterns and other factors that influenced the result, such as level and length of participation and number of simultaneous sports. (Butcher, line 27-27) After conducting detailed research in each withdrawal pattern, they concluded several main reasons of withdrawal, such as no more enjoyment, wanting time for non-sport activities and injuries.

This source provided super-detailed information for the research, the authors divided the problem into several patterns to offer more insightful conclusions and findings. However, the limitation of this source is that this research was conducted in 2002, the situation of the topic can be totally different, which weakened the reliability of this source.

Source:

Dangi, Tek B. and Witt, Peter A. “Why Children/Youth Drop Out of Sports?” Youth Development Initiative, Dec, 2016.

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The authors, from Texas A&M University, used a model of recreation and leisure constraints from Crane & Temple (2015, pp. 121-22) to organize drop out reasons under the three headings in the model: Intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints. (Dangi and Witt, line 15-16) They came up with several reasons under each heading in the model. For intrapersonal reasons, not having fun, anxiety and nervousness due to excessive criticism and pressure from coaches or not getting along with coaches. As for interpersonal constraints, parental pressures and loss of ownership and not having enough time to participate in other age appropriate activities. As for structural constraints, sports related injuries, overuse and financial constraints. These all contribute to the drop of the participation rate in youth sports.

This source is comprehensive, it offered more than 10 reasons for this study, which covered almost every category. However, the limitation of this source is that it failed to provide specific data to illustrate and support the research.

Source:

Fraser-Thomas, Jessica, et al. “Examining Adolescent Sport Dropout and Prolonged Engagement from a Developmental Perspective.” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 2008, 20:3, 318-333, DOI: 10.10080/10413200802163549.

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The authors, form York University and Queen’s University, used data to examine youth sport dropout and prolonged engagement from a developmental perspective focusing on

physical and psychosocial factors. (Fraser-Thomas, et al, line 1-2) They conducted their research on 50 adolescent swimmers. The results indicated that dropouts were involved in several categories. For physical factors, training patterns and level of maturation are both important. As for psychosocial factors, pressure form parents, coaches and peers, children’s own motivation and purpose in lives all contribute.

This source divided the research into two parts, which helped to clarify the overlap and misunderstandings in this research. However, the limitation is that the data was only from 50 adolescent swimmers. The data was not representative enough to get a general conclusion.