Value Priorities in Connection to Sport Participation

Sport participation is not only a token for the general physical health of youth and future generations, but also a fundamental element of youth socialisation and value transfer. This study is based on Youth2004©, which contains a nationwide, randomly selected representative sample of 15 to 29 year old subjects (N=8000). The purpose of this study was to analyse the layout of value preferences of sport participant and non-participant Hungarian youth by using the same methods of analysis that were applied to the data of the first edition of the Youth research series in year 2000. The goals are to analyse whether similar values would connect to sport participation, taking the time element into consideration, and to review how sport participation is associated with the layout of values, examining the socio-demographic determination of both sport participation and value orientation. For data analysis Mean and non-parametric Mann & Whitney U test was applied. It was found that, similarly to previous results, the majority of values associated with sport participation fall under the self-direction, stimulation value dimensions of Schwartz (1994). However, the higher importance given to the materialistic value of ‘wealth/richness’ by the non-participants in the first set of data (Perényi 2008), was not traceable four years later. Furthermore, the continuing democratisation of society and sport provided for the inclusion of wider societal segments, which can also be tracked by the wider portfolio of preferred values by sporting participants. Values like appreciation of ‘tradition’ and ‘national identity’, however, may also have more association to other socio-demographic factors and, as a consequence, to life circumstances, such as size of settlement or level of education.