Socialization of secondary school athletes into sport in Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this was to investigate the extent of influence of significant others (parents, siblings, peers, P.E. teachers and coaches) and socializing situations (school and mass media) in socialization into sport of secondary school athletes in Kenya. The study was guided by the hypothesis that "significant others and socializing situations to not influence socialization into sport of secondary school athletes in Kenya". Alongside, factors such as the boarding status of school, school category, gender and parental education and occupation and occupation were examined to determine how they interact with significant others and socializing situations in the socialization into sport of secondary school athletes. Random sampling was used to select four provinces using the criteria of participation in the inter-provincial ball games championships. From each province 12 schools were proposively selected using the criteria of representation of the province during the inter-province ball games championships. A total of 636 purposively selected athletes took part in the study. Questionaires were used to collect data. The resulting data was analyzed using chi-square, student t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 05 level of significance. Post hoc Tukey HSD was utilized to test the strength of the resulting significant differences. Findings indicated that significant others and socializing situations influence the socialization into sport of secondary school athletes in Kenya. Indeed, the socialization into sport of secondary school athletes is contributed mostly by the coash, peers, P.E. teachers, brothers, fathers, sisters and mothers without gender differences (p >.05). On the other hand, the influence of socializing situations wanes from the school, television, sport magazines, newspapers to internet without gender differences. Findings also showed that the effects of boarding status of school were significant (p >.05) for all significant others except for the P.E. teachers, while the effect of school category was also significant (p >.05) with the exception of peers. Findings also showed that the parental social economic status were significant (p >.05) for fathers' education, mothers' education, fathers' occupation while P.E. teachers influence on the socialization into sport of secondary school athletes is not affected by the level of their mothers occupation. From the findings of the study, it is recommended that parents and especially the mother need to play a crucial role in the socialization into sport of the secondary school athletes. Secondly, schools need to contribute much more in socialization into sport of secondary school athletes. Further studies should be done encompassing athletes in other sports in secondary schools, primary schools and elite athletes to establish the divergences in their socialization into sport.