The investigation of sport persistence in the light of health, relationship network, motivation and academic achievement

Abstract

Although there is scarce research in the area of sport persistence, investigating it can make a significant contribution to a thorough examination and understanding of the factors underlying an athlete’s activity. It integrates the components of physical activity, sports motivation and commitment, as well as the factors affecting them. However, the network between them is not yet clear. The aim of this research is to investigate the factors influencing sports persistence. For this we used the PERSIST 2019 database, which contains student data of higher education institutions in the eastern region of Hungary, as well as higher education institutions in Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine and Serbia (N=2201). Factors influencing sports persistence were examined by linear regression analysis. The examined factors (socio-demographic background, objective and subjective health-awareness, integration and network, sport motivation, academic achievement) were included through five models. Based on results, the role of socio-demographic factors is less important: only the effect of gender and training field is significant. Concerning health awareness, the effect of sports frequency and certain forms of risk-behaviour are also significantly positive. Coping has a positive effect, and satisfaction with leisure activities results are higher while satisfaction with teacher quality lowers sports persistence. Sport embeddedness is significant in maintaining sports persistence, but the role of relationship network is not significant. Intrinsic and introjected sport motivation has a positive while extrinsic motivation has a negative effect. Finally, the retaining power of objective academic performance was detectable. Although the results provide a solid basis, they do not yet provide an accurate picture of the factors affecting sport persistence. Therefore, in the future it is worth comparing and analysing the results with factors influencing physical activity and sport motivation.