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Impacts of Sports on Students’ Life
Nor Hidayatun Abdul Razak1, Faizan Abd Jabar1,
Faculty of Business Studies1
Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang
Pahang, Malaysia
norhidayatun@pahang.uitm.edu.my
faizan@pahang.uitm.edu.my
Sharifah Norhuda Syed Wahid2
Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences2
Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang
Pahang, Malaysia
sha_norhuda@pahang.uitm.edu.my
Sport and games become crucial roles in helping the development
of human minds and body especially for children. Parents should
encourage their children to get involved in sports from the early
childhood. Sports activities could prevent them from involving in
negative activities, yet increasing the quality of life. This paper
examined the involvement of students in sports activities during
the school holidays. They normally have fewer activities during
this leisure time and have more tendencies to get involve in
negative activities if not guided towards the positive activities. A
total of 261 students from two daily schools in Pahang were
involved in this study. About 41 percent or 107 students are
interested in sports and many of them like to play badminton,
football, volleyball and netball. The result also shows that
students need additional facilities such as bowling center and
swimming pool to ensure they could try another type of sport. By
providing the facilities according to their interest could give them
more enjoyment and exposure to the new sport activities. The
students also could experiencing the healthy life style and be
prevented from joining the negative activities. Hence, the finding
of this study is hoped to provide useful information in improving
the quality of life among students especially for secondary school
level.
Keywords - Sport, quality of life, leisure time, student
I. INTRODUCTION
Students nowadays are broadly exposed to many sport
activities. With the awareness of healthy life style and the
facilities provided surrounding their living areas, most
students could choose the best sport that suit them well.
However, there are several barriers to stop students from
actively involved in sport. These include the current life style
whereby more students are interested in playing game online
instead on the real field. As this world becomes the world
without the limit, students tend to enjoy their life by using
computer, ipad, hand phone, play station and ignoring the real
world around them. Therefore, many of them live in imaginary
world by playing football, tennis, ping pong, squash and many
other games that could be done through online. They have
their own online community and live without the need to go
out from house or without ever move their feet from their
room to enjoy the games. By having food and drinks besides
their table, students could spend hours and hours in front of
the computer playing games, surfing, watching movies,
chatting and others. By having this of habit, soon or later these
students might encounter health problem such as back ache,
blurry eyes, and headache and dizziness. Other than that, they
might also exposed to pornography, gambling, copywriting
and cut out from social community.
Advancement of technology is good but there must
be a balance between the use of the technology and the quality
of life. As sport is part of the method of contributing towards
the good quality of life, students must be persuaded to join the
sport activities for their own sake. Sport could help them stay
healthy; prevent them from joining crime activities; promoting
social bonding; and increase students personality or
characteristics. These are all contributing to the good quality
of life. With the good support from the government and
private organizations on sport activities, more and more
facilities and financial support has been given to schools to
pull the interest of students on sport. Therefore, students
should grab the opportunity to involve in sport not only for the
sake of individual wellness but also to enjoy the benefits of
doing well in sport activities.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Sport promotes good health to students whereby those involve
in sport normally have good stamina and healthier than others.
These students are normally active, more confident and
cheerful. Sport is physical activities that help human to sustain
health and prevent them from a chronic disease such as
obesity, anxiety, depression, heart attack, diabetic, etc. As
admitted by C. Ferron [1], teenagers who apply outdoor sport
can be more energetic and physically fit because they are able
to burn the fat and calories. Other than that, sport could
develop muscles and help body coordination.
Currently, there are many sport activities available in
schools and students could join many types of sport activities.
By joining those activities students then could polish their
skills such as in football, basket ball, softball, squash, tennis,
etc. Hence, this could give them opportunity to stay healthy
and have self-discipline in controlling what they do and eat to
have a good life. According to Sigribur P.Eiosdottir [2] stated
in his study, The Icelandic authorities and Diseases Control
and Prevention has recommended that children and
adolescents should have 60 minutes of physical activities per
day. If all students could follow this suggestion, Malaysians
might not have to worry about the obesity problem among
youngsters in future. However, it seems impossible as stated in
Asia Pacific Family Journal by Sherina and Rampal [3],
Malaysia is facing the “nutrition transition” problem whereby
many citizens are lacking in physical activities and the number
of obese is increasing.
In addition, sport promotes good values to students
and could prevent students from involving in negative
activities. By having sport activities, students could reduce
boredom and use time effectively. Unfortunately, students
nowadays prefer to spend their leisure time which embarks
into bad activities such as loitering, drug, alcohol problem,
vandalism, snatcher, etc. Somehow, some students like to
spend time at home playing computer games, watching movies
online, chatting, face book, twitter and many other use of
computer. This is good but if not controlled, these students
will become hook into it. Not to mention the possibility of
students that might involve in online gambling, pornographic,
pirating, hacking, and other bad online activities. Jamieson
and Ross (2007) in Carmichael [4] reviewed article said that a
well structured sport activities could reduce crime amongs
youth by giving them “a positive identity, feelings of
empowerment and by helping youth acquire leadership,
teamwork and self-governance skills under adult supervision.”
Parents involvement in physical activities could be
the good reason for students participation in sport activities in
school. They also promote good lifestyle by not smoking and
eat healthy food. According to B.D. Kirkcaldy [5] in his study,
that the adolescents who involved in sports or physical
activities normally use less cigarettes compared to those are
not. In this case, parents should play important roles to
encourage their children to get involved in sports yet develop
healthy lifestyle behaviours. This have been approved by India
J Ornelas, 2007 [6] said that parental engagement, family
cohesion and parent child communication have a good
responsive and encouragement towards their children physical
activities. Besides that, lack of involvement in sport making
the problems worsens and with time and money, the problem
could be solved [7]. Therefore, the government also needs to
interfere with the children and youth growth and development
by providing the facilities at neighbourhood such as public
gymnasium, field, recreational park, tennis and badminton
court, bicycle lane and etc. With the sports facilities nearby
them, children always are engaging with the sports activities
and use the leisure time wisely. [8]
Through sport, students could enjoy friendship and
have a sense of belonging. Students could learn to respects
others, help each other, think of other people, encourage each
group members, and learn good value through strong social
bonding among team members. Through sport, social bonding
not only created among students but also their parents,
supporters of the sport team, audience and those involve
directly or indirectly in the sport collaboration. This
relationship could strengthen the social bonding and promote
the sense of belonging among students and other people
involved. As Tonts [9] said, “participation in sport provides
access to social networks and helps provide a sense of
connectivity amongst residents.”
Social bonding in sport is important in developing
self-confident and self-esteem. According to Frost and
McKelvie [10] study on physical activities and self-esteem for
students, it showed that “a higher level of exercise activity is
associated with a higher level of self-esteem.” During sport
tournaments normally students need more support from people
around them to increase self-confident. Therefore, sometimes
during the games, by touching one shoulder, hugging,
shouting for encouragement, calling their names and other
kind of gestures are used to increase confident among students
that involve in the games. This could make them play harder
and tie up their cooperation further which could lead them to a
better achievement.
III. METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
The study was conducted at two daily secondary schools in a
rural area of Pahang, Malaysia. There were 261 students from
various backgrounds that took part in the study. Questionnaire
was distributed to them and the data obtained were analyzed
using statistical procedures executed by the PASW 18.0
including descriptive statistics, normality test, cross-tabulation
table and independent sample t-test. The objectives in this
study are as follows:
i. To determine students’ activity in sports.
ii. To identify the significance difference in sport
between gender.
iii. To carry out any suggestion(s) that will be used to
improve students’ life style from negative activity.
IV. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
TABLE I. RESPONDENTS’ BACKGROUND
Items Overall Interested in Sports
Activity
Gender
Male
Female
139 (53.26%)
122 (46.74%)
24 (9.20%)
83 (31.80%)
Parents’ Education
Level
No formal education
Primary school
Secondary school
College/ University
10 (3.83%)
66 (25.29%)
125 (47.89%)
50 (19.16%)
3 (1.15%)
25 (9.58%)
74 (28.35%)
8 (3.07%)
Family income
Per month
Less than RM1000
RM1001 to RM3000
RM3001 to RM5000
RM5001 to RM7000
Above RM7001
98 (37.55%)
125 (47.89%)
22 (8.43%)
2 (0.77%)
14 (5.36%)
61 (23.37%)
40 (1.15%)
3 (8.43%)
1 (0.38%)
2 (0.77%)
As shown in the TABLE I, there are 261 respondents with 139
(53.26%) of them were males. Among them, only 107 students
very interested in sports activity such as football, netball,
badminton, tennis, etc. Most of the respondents which
involved in this study are from the family income with less
than RM3000 per month and education level of their parents is
secondary school level. The detail of the 107 respondents who
interested in sports activity is shown in TABLE II.
TABLE II. TYPES OF SPORT ACTIVITY
Types of Sport Frequencies (%)
Yes No
Badminton
Male
Female
35 (32.71%)
14 (13.08%)
48 (44.86%)
10 (9.35%)
Netball
Male
Female
16 (14.95%)
5 (4.67%)
67 (62.62%)
19(17.76%)
Football
Male
Female
38 (35.51%)
3 (2.80%)
45 (42.06%)
21 (19.63%)
Swimming
Male
Female
6 (5.61%)
2 (1.87%)
77 (71.96%)
22 (20.56%)
Volleyball
Male
Female
22 (20.56%)
3 (2.80%)
61 (57.01%)
21 (19.63%)
Bowling
Male
Female
10 (9.35%)
1 (0.93%)
73 (68.22%)
23 (21.50%)
Tennis
Male
Female
4 (3.74%)
0 (0.00%)
79 (73.83%)
24 (22.43%)
Others
Male
Female
19 (17.76%)
2 (1.87%)
64 (59.81%)
22 (20.56%)
Majority of the respondents prefer to play badminton
followed by football and volleyball. For male respondents,
they most preferable to join football rather than other physical
activity compared to female respondents that always synonym
with netball prefer to play badminton. From this study, it also
shows that by doing physical activity respondents that from
secondary school can avoid from negative activities such as
loitering, smoking and other entertainment.
It was proven from this study for those respondents
who are interested in physical activity disagree for negative
activities with 74 (69.16%) of them does not involved in any
kind of entertainment, 89 (83.18%) were not loitering and 96
(89.72%) also were not smoking which is consistent with [5]
and [8].
TABLE III. IMPACT OF SPORT ACTIVITY
Impact Frequencies (%)
Yes No
Entertainment
Male
Female
22 (20.56%)
11 (10.28%)
61 (57.01%)
13 (12.15%)
Loitering
Male
Female
13 (12.15%)
5 (4.67%)
70 (65.42%)
19(17.76%)
Smoking
Male
Female
10 (9.35%)
1 (0.93%)
73 (68.22%)
23(21.50%)
In addition independent sample t-test has been conducted to
determine the significance difference between male and
female respondent for each selected sport activity. Normality
test revealed that the data obtained is approximately normal so
that t-test can be performed. The following table indicates that
there is a significance difference between male and female for
football and tennis which is male respondent more preferable
to choose that types of sport.
TABLE IV. INDEPENDENT SAMPLE T-TEST
Types of Sport
t-test value p-value
Badminton
Netball
Football
Swimming
Volleyball
Bowling
Tennis
-1.400
-0.167
3.773
-0.180
1.659
1.432
2.038
0.165
0.867
0.000
0.858
0.104
0.157
0.045
V. CONCLUSION
Based on the research findings, it could be concluded that
generally there are many alternatives to ensure that teenagers’
especially secondary school students could spend their leisure
time in a right way, for example by doing physical activity.
Many facilities should be provided to make them interested in
sport activity. This study also found that respondents need
extra facilities in their community such as swimming pool and
bowling center.
Nowadays, the issues of the students’ involvement in
loitering and smoking activities become popular because they
spend more time with their friends rather than family. Parents
should know with whom their son make friend and also what
kind of activity they had spent together. In order to improve
the quality of life among secondary school students, more
attention must be given especially to those students that
identified are interested in loitering, entertainment, smoking
and other negative activities. More physical activities which
could motivate them should be carried out such as sport
carnival, open tournament and sport competition by school or
community. Although the number of students that are
interested in negative activities is not serious yet, an
immediate action has to be done as early as possible in
improving the quality of their life. Hopefully, the finding of
this study could provide useful information in improving the
quality of life especially among the secondary school students.
REFERENCES
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With Health Perceptions and Experimental Behaviors. Health Education
Research, pp.225-233.
[2] Sigribur P.Eiosdottir, A. L. (2008). Trends In Physical Activity and
Participation in Sport Clubs Among Iceland Adolescents. The European
Journal of Public Health, 18 (3), pp.289-293.
[3] Sherina Mohd Sidik, Lekhraj Rampal. (2009). The Prevalence and
Factors Associated with Obesity among Adult. Asia Pacific Family
Medicine, pp.2.
[4] Carmichael D (2008), Youth Sport vs. Youth Crime Evidence that youth
engaged in organized sport are not likely to participate in criminal
activities, Retrived from http://activehealthylinks.com.
[5] B.D. Kirkcaldy, R. S. (2002). The Relationship Between Physical
Activties and Self-Image and Problem Behaviour Among Adolescents.
Social Psychiatry Epidemiol, pp.544-550.
[6] India J Ornelas, K. P. (2007). Parental influences on adolescents physical
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in Thailand. Asian Sport Management Review, pp.3-6.
[8] Richard G. Prins, A. O. (2009). Objective and Perceived Availability of
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dec 2011. http:/www.ijbnpa.org/content/6/1/70
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[10] Jackie Frost, Stuart J. McKelvie . (December, 2005). The Relationship of
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