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Creativity Research Journal
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Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport
Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood
Matthew T. Bowers a , B. Christine Green b , Florian Hemme a & Laurence Chalip b
a The University of Texas at Austin
b University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Published online: 08 Aug 2014.
To cite this article: Matthew T. Bowers , B. Christine Green , Florian Hemme & Laurence Chalip (2014) Assessing the
Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood, Creativity Research Journal, 26:3,
314-327, DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2014.929420
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2014.929420
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Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation
Settings and Creativity in Adulthood
Matthew T. Bowers
The University of Texas at Austin
B. Christine Green
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Florian Hemme
The University of Texas at Austin
Laurence Chalip
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This article presents an assessment of the relative influences of time spent participating
in organized sports and informal sports during childhood with respect to the develop-
ment of general creativity. In this study, 99 upper-division undergraduate and graduate
students completed a comprehensive childhood leisure activities questionnaire and the
Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. According to the results of the joint generalized
least-squares regression analysis, hours spent in organized sport settings was negatively
related to creativity as an adult; time spent in unstructured sport settings was found to
be positively related to adult creativity. The findings also point to the importance of
balancing participation across organized and unstructured settings. The most creative
individuals in the sample were those who spent roughly half of their sport participation
time in each setting, as opposed to individuals with below-average creativity, who spent
upwards of 3=4 of their sport participation time in organized settings. Therefore, foster-
ing creative development through sport may not require a dramatic reorientation from
current youth sport development models, but only a shift toward a more balanced dis-
tribution of time spent playing in both organized and unstructured settings. Future
experiments are needed to test this relationship.
From politics to business to education to sports,
creativity is one of the buzzwords of this decade. We
used to think of creativity as the province of artists,
musicians and writers. Now we’re waking up to the fact
that all facets of modern life demand creative input.
(Carson, 2010)
The development of creativity has emerged as having
great significance for the abilities of both individuals
and societies to adapt and function in a rapidly changing
world. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) contended that creativity
allows individuals to cross the boundaries of domains
and synthesize information in a manner that permits
them to address issues with greater flexibility and flu-
idity. Carson (2010) argued that the fundamental
changes in technology, cyber-communication, and glo-
balization are transforming the manner in which people
learn, do business, and form relationships with one
another. Without developing creative abilities, people
will struggle to keep pace with changes to their environ-
ments and will be ill-equipped to negotiate the types of
Correspondence should be sent to Matthew T. Bowers,
Kinesiology and Health Education, University of Texas at Austin,
2109 San Jacinto Blvd – D3700, Austin, TX 78712-0360. E-mail:
mattbowers@austin.utexas.edu
CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL, 26(3), 314–327, 2014
Copyright #Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1040-0419 print=1532-6934 online
DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2014.929420
Downloaded by [Matthew Bowers] at 20:01 08 August 2014
complex problems that are likely to emerge in the
coming decades.
Although the antecedents of creativity are manifold,
creativity research has indicated that the participative
context plays a critical role in whether or not creativity
can be developed (e.g., Rogers, 1959). Consequently,
when seeking to understand and explicate the develop-
ment of creativity throughout the lifespan, the social
and contextual conditions of childhood are of particular
importance (Koestner, Welker, & Fichman, 1999).
Rogers (1959), whose seminal article on the theoretical
conditions necessary to foster creative development laid
the groundwork for empirical inquiry into this issue, has
argued that in two matched groups, ‘‘the one in which a
leader establishes a measurably greater degree of con-
ditions of psychological safety and freedom will sponta-
neously form a greater number of creative products, and
these products will be judged to be significantly more
novel’’ (p. 78).
A considerable amount of research has demonstrated
the free play of childhood to be a fertile ground for the
development of individual creativity (e.g., Frost,
Wortham, & Reifel, 2008). Within this body of scholar-
ship, play has been shown to have a positive influence
on two primary means of creative expression: problem
solving and ideational fluency. With respect to problem
solving, play experiences can help children learn to gen-
erate a broader range of solutions to challenging prob-
lems (Curran, 1999; Wyver & Spence, 1999). In terms
of ideational fluency, a meta-analysis of the literature
on play and development conducted by Fisher (1992)
determined that children who spend more time in open-
ended play tend to display an increased ability to gener-
ate a myriad of divergent ideas in their writing,
language, and artistic endeavors. Similarly, children
who are allowed to co-create their own games within a
playful learning environment see a positive impact on
the development of creativity (Kangas, 2010), and chil-
dren exposed to a play intervention program have
shown significant increases in verbal and figural creativ-
ity (Garaigordobil, 2006).
Aside from a smaller body of research demonstrating
that environmental alienation (Tardiff & Sternberg,
1988), parental strife (c.f. Olszewski-Kubilius, 2000),
strict discipline (Gardner, 1994), and extrinsic rewards
(Eisenberger, 1992) can be conducive to creative develop-
ment, empirical research has largely substantiated the
notions put forth by Rogers (1959). In short, children
who are exposed to developmental play contexts in which
there is freedom from competition (Gerrard, Poteat, &
Ironsmith, 1996; Kohn, 1992), an absence of evaluation
(Amabile, 1979; Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt,
1984), and no provision of extrinsic rewards (Eisenberg
& Shanock, 2003; Hennesy & Amabile, 1988; Kasof,
Chen, Himsel, & Greenberger, 2007), have been shown
to demonstrate higher levels of creativity both in child-
hood and adulthood (e.g., Mackinnon, 1962).
In spite of the benefits they afford, children’s unstruc-
tured leisure activity and play are increasingly being
replaced with formal, adult-led activities (Chudacoff,
2007; Postman, 1994). Youth sports, in particular, have
become formalized and structured according to parental
notions of ideal forms of athletic pursuits (Devereaux,
1976). Central to the shift toward formalization of chil-
dren’s sport participation are two parental drives: to
encourage and facilitate their child’s achievement, and
to minimize the risk to which their child is exposed.
The marketplace has responded to these parental desires
by offering safe, adult-supervised activities that purport
to prepare young people to achieve and to provide a
wide range of benefits such as health, socialization,
character building, time management skills, and even a
chance to earn a college scholarship. At the same time,
many sport settings are organized to reflect the structure
and culture of professional sport settings (cf. Rigauer,
1981): Coaches are often authoritarian; children are
encouraged to specialize at an early age; hard work
and intense focus are prized above fun, spontaneity,
and creativity. Whereas previous generations of children
spent a large portion of their free time playing unsuper-
vised informal sports in neighborhoods and nearby
parks (e.g., sandlot baseball, pickup basketball; cf.
Devereaux, 1976; Ogden, 2002), today’s children and
adolescents often have significantly fewer opportunities
to play in these unstructured settings, thereby missing
out on potentially beneficial participation in critical
developmental processes.
SPORT AS PLAY, PLAY AS CREATIVITY
Unlike organized sport, which is predicated on
competition, evaluation, and extrinsic goal structures
(Guttman, 2004), the playful, informal types of sport
participation (such as those found in neighborhood
pickup games) can be theorized to be conducive to the
creation and enhancement of creativity through their
deemphasis of zero-sum competition in favor of proces-
sual outcomes, and their allowance for self-governance
in place of adult control. Vygotsky (1978) explicitly
identified sport as a potential outlet for play, noting that
to define play as an activity which gives pleasure to the
child is inaccurate. ...Sporting games (not only athletic
sports, but other games that can be won or lost) are very
often accompanied by displeasure when the outcome is
unfavorable to the child. (p. 92)
For Vygotsky, athletic activities have become the pre-
dominant form of play for school-age children, and
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 315
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although they represent a more limited form of play,
sports do fill a specific role for children. He asserted,
As play develops, we see a movement towards the
conscious realization of its purpose. ...In sports, the
purpose of the game is one of its dominant features,
without which there would be no point—like examining
a piece of candy, putting it into one’s mouth, chewing it,
and then spitting it out. In such play, the object, which is
to win, is recognized in advance. (p. 103)
The rules of sport are, therefore, the purpose that
gives the activity meaning for the child as he=she learns
to reason in a more complex manner. At this stage, play
(often in the form of sport) shifts from the realm of the
imaginary to being grounded in the child’s actual mem-
ory, and helps develop an abstract understanding of the
division between work and play. Within the confines of
informal sport and games, a child may experience—and
learn to manage—emotions and relationships in a
psychologically safe environment that legitimates an
opportunity for a child to behave ‘‘as though he were
a head taller than himself’’ (p. 102).
Within these play environments, Vygotsky also noted
an opportunity for the development of the creative
imagination as children’s play activities foster higher-
level mental processes that are consciously regulated
through the child’s inner speech (Smolucha, 1992). For
Vygotsky, imagination and creativity have always been
based in reality, and ‘‘play is imagination in action: a
creative process that develops in play because a real situ-
ation takes a new and unfamiliar meaning’’ (Lindqvist,
2003, p. 249). Through object substitutions (e.g., a stick
straddled by the child who pretends it is a horse) and
play interactions with adults=older peers, children learn
to consider reality in more imaginative terms. In this
sense, a neighborhood stickball game affords the con-
text through which children might imagine themselves
as Major League Baseball players competing in the
World Series. Within this type of fantasy play, children
are able to engage in the cognitive processes that facili-
tate the development of creativity through the inte-
gration of reality and imagination, a notion supported
by Hoffmann and Russ (2012), who found a significant
relationship between forms of pretend play and creativ-
ity as measured via divergent thinking and storytelling.
Like Vygotsky, Piaget (1962) focused on the seem-
ingly inexorable movement toward games with rules as
children age. Piaget identified three stages of play as a
form of cognitive assimilation: functional play, symbolic
play, and games with rules. In characterizing games with
rules, the category under which sport must fall, Piaget
contended that ‘‘they are the ludic activity of the socia-
lized being’’ (p. 142). For Piaget, as assimilation over-
takes accommodation in the development of the child,
the negotiation of social situations and interactions
moves to the developmental forefront: ‘‘Just as the sym-
bol replaces mere practice as soon as thought makes its
appearance, so the rule replaces the symbol and inte-
grates practice as soon as certain social relationships
are formed, and the question is to discover these rela-
tionships’’ (p. 142).
Furthermore, Piaget explicitly asserted that through
the social interaction and the creation and negotiation
of rules that occur in self-governed children’s games,
children acquire the necessary cognitive skills to develop
moral judgment and reasoning, among other outcomes
(cf. Piaget, 1932). Although some scholars have argued
that Piaget failed to adequately address the development
of creativity within his theoretical framework, Ayman-
Nolley (1999) contended that the dialectical explanation
of assimilation and accommodation offers clear implica-
tions for understanding creativity from a Piagetian
perspective. During assimilation, the individual adjusts
the reality of the environment to his or her existing
schema, whereas during accommodation, the existing
schema are adjusted to fit the reality. In both cases,
‘‘the individual is the active integrator of self and
environment’’ with the environment serving as the
‘‘boundaries of expression’’ for the creative product
(Ayman-Nolley, 1999, p. 274). By extension, a play
environment with fewer boundaries would afford
increased opportunity for the development of creative
thoughts and products. In this regard, the developmen-
tal process of play serves as the foundation for creativity
insofar as ‘‘the ludic symbol itself is integrated in intel-
ligent activity to the extent to which the symbolism is
preparation for the construction of representation and
free assimilation becomes creative imagination’’ (Piaget,
1962, p. 213). As Russ (e.g., 1993, 2003) pointed out,
many of the same cognitive and affective processes
found in creativity in fact come to the forefront in chil-
dren’s play activities. In other words, play begets crea-
tivity, and more playful forms of sport participation
would be expected to beget more opportunities for the
development of creative imagination.
Although the direct relationship between sport par-
ticipation and creativity is never addressed in either’s
works, Vygotksy’s and Piaget’s developmental theories
provide a rarely explicated theoretical link between
informal sport participation in childhood and the devel-
opment of creativity. A synthesis of their contributions
offers compelling theoretical grounds for considering
the impact of exposure to organized, work-like sport par-
ticipation versus unstructured, play-like sport partici-
pation on the development of an individual’s creativity.
Sport as play, therefore, is far from a frivolous or
superfluous pursuit (at least when considered through
the theoretical lenses of Piaget and Vygotsky), and actu-
ally helps to comprise an essential stage in the creative
316 BOWERS ET AL.
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development of the child. Such an argument corre-
sponds with other findings that unstructured sport has
been shown to enhance participants’ social (problem
solving ability, conflict management skills, flexibility),
emotional (self-concept, perspective taking, moral
reasoning), and cognitive development (spatial reason-
ing, seriation, creativity; cf. Frost et al., 2008).
CREATIVITY IN SPORT
At present, creativity research related to sport largely
has focused on understanding the impact of particular
training programs on the development of sport-specific
creativity. For example, Morris (2000) reviewed the
sport psychology literature related to psychological
characteristics and sport performance and found one
investigation on the influence of creativity on the success
of young athletes that demonstrated a potential linkage.
In this particular study, Kovac (1996) examined 59 boys
(14–17 years old) at a soccer-specific secondary school
utilizing Urban and Jellen’s (1993) Figural Creativity Test
and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. Kovac found
creativity to be correlated with success among the young
athletes. Another meta-analysis examining the impact of
exercise on children’s cognitive functioning found that
children who participated in aerobic exercise performed
higher on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking
(Tomporowski, Davis, Miller, & Naglieri, 2008).
Recently, Memmert has produced a number of com-
pelling experimental studies on the effectiveness of pro-
grams aimed at training in-game, tactical creativity in
sport. Memmert (2006) conducted two studies related
to the development of creativity in gifted nonathletes
as part of a sport enrichment program aimed at promot-
ing creative thinking in team ball sports. The first study
was a 6-month longitudinal study of 33 gifted nonath-
letes in which the children were trained in a diversified
enrichment curriculum based on three main pillars:
playful situation-oriented access, ability-oriented access,
and skill-oriented access. Comparing a gifted treatment
group with a nongifted treatment group and a gifted
control group, the creative performance of the gifted
treatment group significantly improved relative to the
comparison samples on a series of in-game, situational
measures of creativity. In a follow-up study (published
in the same article) aimed at understanding the some-
what surprising results of the first study, Memmert
employed the inattentional blindness paradigm to
explore the individual differences in visual attention of
gifted and non-gifted children. The results demonstrated
that the gifted children attained faster levels of auto-
mation in their thought processes, which allowed them
to free up attentional capacity for other tasks, in turn
allowing them to approach a situation more creatively.
In later studies, Memmert (2007, 2009) also demon-
strated that a training program focused on broadening
attention led to an increase in sport-specific, in-game
creative performance, and that children with lower levels
of inattentional blindness produced more novel
responses in a test of divergent thinking.
Memmert and Roth (2007) conducted a study to
examine the efficacy of creativity training interventions
on the development of tactical creativity in a group of
elementary-aged children playing handball, soccer, or
field hockey. Participants were assigned to both specific
and nonspecific training conditions, and the results indi-
cated that children exposed to specific tactical training
for a given sport improved their tactical creativity in
that sport while children exposed to the nonspecific
training condition showed improvements in general
creativity measures. Similarly, an analysis of the neural
networks of participants in a creativity training program
found that although practice in a specific sport initially
increases creative performance, continued exposure to
training precipitates a sharp decline in creativity over
time (Memmert & Perl, 2009).
A more recent study conducted by Memmert, Baker,
and Bertsch (2010) examined the role of practice con-
ditions in the development of sport-specific creativity
for elite athletes in team ball sports. In this study, 72 pro-
fessional athletes (average age of 23.2 years) within the
German sport development system were identified and
selected by their trainers as being one of either the three
most creative or the three least creative players on their
respective teams. After collecting data on the detailed
sport training and play experiences of the participants,
the authors found that those athletes identified as highly
creative only differed significantly from their less creative
counterparts in one aspect of their childhood and ado-
lescent sport backgrounds: The creative athletes spent
more time participating in unstructured play related to
their sport. Although the authors tempered the results
by suggesting that ‘‘play is important but only to a
point,’’ their emphasis is on tracing the path to expertise
and elite-level performance (Memmert et al., 2010, p. 12).
Although they did not examine the impact of time spent
in play on the development of general creativity, the
authors maintained that this study provided further
‘‘support for the notion that creativity is learned and
stored early in life,’’ and that sport was a salient context
for understanding this creative development (p. 12).
Finally, a previous quasi-experimental study indi-
cated that a sample of Brazilian children, naturally
exposed to broader, unguided stimuli and game experi-
ences, demonstrated higher levels of improvement in
general measures of creativity than a sample of German
children receiving the specific tactical instruction and
coaching characteristic of German sport clubs (Raab,
Hamsen, Roth, & Greco, 2001).
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 317
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CREATIVITY THROUGH SPORT?
Despite the fact that fostering creativity and innovation
is at the forefront of domestic and international policy
agendas, sport researchers have largely ignored the
subject beyond sport-specific contexts (cf. White House
Office of the Press Secretary, 2009). Where scholarship
focused on exploring the relationship between sport
and creativity exists, it is still in its nascent stage and
remains relatively narrow (Memmert, 2006). This dearth
of research into the topic may very well be due to the
fact that ‘‘creativity as a problem of study is large,
unwieldy, and hard to grasp’’ (Sternberg, 2006, p. 3).
Creativity is simply difficult to operationalize and study,
especially in a sport setting; however, the gap in
scholarly discourse may also speak to a broader
incongruence between the values and practices in modern
sport and the philosophical tenants underpinning creativ-
ity. In many ways, the youth sport development systems
in the United States have rendered a predominantly
organized sport experience that seemingly does little to
foster creativity in its child participants while taking time
away from activities that traditionally facilitate creativity.
Sport’s sociohistorical development, for example,
reveals an underlying culture much more in line with
principles of militarism, authority, and obedience than
creativity. In some respects, the cultivation and expression
of creativity may be considered anathema to traditional
models of sport development, which are predicated
on authoritarian instruction, de-individualization, and
repetition-based tactical training. Furthermore, creativity
and expression, as social constructs, emerge out of a more
liberal ideological basis that some might perceive as
incompatible with the values traditionally espoused to
characterize sportsmen, such as toughness, single-minded
determination, and faith=trust in coaching.
In spite of these potential barriers to studying creativ-
ity, anyone who has been involved with athletics at any
level likely has anecdotal evidence to support the value
of creativity in sport. Whether admiring Pete Maravich’s
vision and passing prowess on the basketball court,
appreciating Doug Flutie’s improvisational style of
quarterbacking on the football field, or watching in
awe while Carlos Valderrama effortlessly distributes a
soccer ball around the pitch, creativity holds an unde-
niable place in the fabric of sport. Although Memmert
and his colleagues have made significant strides in
understanding the impact of training programs on the
development of sport-specific creativity within samples
of primarily elite-level youth and adult athletes at differ-
ent stages within the German sport development system,
the relationship between sport participation and the
general development of creativity outside of the sport
context remains unarticulated. In other words, is it not
only possible to develop creativity in sport, but perhaps
to develop creativity through sport? And if it is
indeed possible for sport participation to influence
general creative intelligence, what are the contextual
boundary conditions that may foster or inhibit this
development?
To address these questions, this study explored the
relationship between time spent in structured, organized
sport and in unstructured, informal sport during child-
hood and the development of creativity in adulthood.
The purpose of this particular study was not to prove
a causal relationship between exposure to different par-
ticipative sport contexts and the development of creativ-
ity. Instead, it tested the theoretical claim that there
could be a relationship between the sport experiences
of childhood and the creative potential of the adult.
There is, in fact, some debate as to whether such a claim
can even be made (Kerka, 1999). Albert (1996) con-
tended that the type of creativity displayed in childhood
shows little resemblance to the creative forms of adult-
hood, and that the degree of continuity is overstated.
Keegan (1996), however, argued that the creativity of
childhood and adulthood reflect an essential continuity
in that creative adults represent the accumulation of
knowledge, passion, and sense of purpose that lead to
the types of higher order expertise required of creative
pursuits. For this reason, Keegan argued, creativity in
adulthood cannot be extricated from the formative years
of childhood and adolescence. In this respect, adult crea-
tivity is thought to be attributable, at least in part, to the
environmental conditions a child is exposed to during
his=her formative years. For example, Russ, Robins,
and Christiano (1999) determined that children who
engage in higher quality fantasy play at a young age
perform better at creativity tests of divergent thinking
over time.
Clarifying the relationships between organized and
unstructured settings and the development of creativity
is a step toward legitimating further study examining
children’s experiences within sport settings. Based on
the preceding review of literature, time spent in unstruc-
tured, play-like activities is expected to have a significant
and positive relationship with creativity; time spent in
structured sport activity is expected to have a significant
negative effect on creativity. Therefore, the analysis is
driven by the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: The number of hours spent playing
informal sports during childhood
and adolescence will have a signifi-
cant positive relationship to creativ-
ity in adulthood.
Hypothesis 2: The number of hours spent playing
organized sports during childhood
318 BOWERS ET AL.
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and adolescence will have a signifi-
cant negative relationship to creativ-
ity in adulthood.
METHOD
Participants
The participants in the study were 100 upper-division
undergraduates and graduate students at a southwestern
university in the United States. The utilization of a stu-
dent sample derived, in part, from previous findings
asserting that, for many individuals, the developmental
peak in creative thinking occurs between the ages of
21 and 29, which is a typical age range for
upper-division undergraduates and most masters-level
graduate students (Runco & Charles, 1997). The sample
consisted of 64 men (64%) and 36 women (36%). Parti-
cipants ranged in age from 19 to 33, but the average age
was 22.76 years (SD ¼2.77). The ethnic composition of
the sample was 58% White, 17% Hispanic, 13% Asian=
Asian-American, 4% African American, and 6% of the
participants did not provide their ethnicity. In addition,
65% of the participants were pursuing sport-related
degrees (e.g., sport management), and 35% were pursu-
ing nonsport-related degrees (e.g., communications,
liberal arts, mathematics). In terms of sport back-
grounds, 83% of the participants reported playing at
least one season of an interscholastic sport in high
school (with an average of 5.69 seasons; SD ¼4.72);
19% reported progressing to play varsity intercollegiate
sport (with an average of 0.65 seasons; SD ¼1.65).
When asked to self-identify their type of athletic back-
ground, 14% of the participants identified themselves
as elite athletes, 53% as competitive athletes, 29% as
recreational athletes, and 4% as non-athletes. Although
all 100 participants completed the childhood leisure
activities questionnaire, one participant did not
complete the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults
(ATTA; Goff & Torrance, 2002), leaving a total of 99
participants who completed all requirements.
Measures
This study employed two instruments to measure the
relationship between creativity and childhood leisure
and sport participation patterns: the ATTA (Goff &
Torrance, 2002) and a childhood leisure activities ques-
tionnaire (modified from Memmert et al., 2010).
ATTA. The ATTA is a shortened version of the
Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and con-
sists of three open-ended activities (Goff & Torrance,
2002). The test battery includes measures to quantify
both figural and verbal creativity by assessing four
norm-referenced abilities (i.e., fluency, originality, elab-
oration, and flexibility), and 15 criterion-referenced crea-
tivity indicators that aggregate to produce an overall
creativity index for each participant. According to the
ATTA testing manual (Goff & Torrance, 2002) fluency
is the ability to produce quantities of relevant ideas, orig-
inality is the ability to produce unique or uncommon
ideas, elaboration is the ability to embellish or develop
ideas with details, and flexibility is the ability to process
information in different ways given the same stimulus.
The scores for the norm-referenced abilities,
criterion-referenced indicators, and creativity indices
were calculated based on the comprehensive ‘‘Guidelines
for Scoring’’ provided in the Abbreviated Torrance Test
for Adults Manual (Goff & Torrance, 2002, pp. 5–25).
The development of the precise norms and technical
information related to the ATTA are available in the
manual, as well. With respect to the reliability of the
instrument, the ATTA manual reports the Kuder-
Richardson reliability coefficient for the aggregated
raw scores of the instrument as .90 (Goff & Torrance,
2002). In addition, interrater reliability for the ATTA
typically ranges from .95 to .99; the over 2,000 studies
utilizing the original TTCT (and the subsequent deriva-
tions such as the ATTA) since its initial development in
1966 speak to the validity of the ATTA as the standard
instrument for adult creativity assessments. In fact, the
instrument has been shown to provide valid, reliable,
and objective measures of verbal and figural creativity
in adults that correlate with creative performance in
the workplace (Althuizen, Wierenga, & Rossiter, 2010;
Cramond, Matthews-Morgan, Bandalos, & Zuo, 2005).
The instrument has also been employed in a number of
different contexts involving adult college students (e.g.,
Kharkhurin & Samadpour Motalleebi, 2008) and has
been shown to provide acceptable levels of reliability
and validity with this population as well.
Childhood leisure activities questionnaire. Partici-
pants also completed a questionnaire consisting of
context-specific sport and leisure participation rates
during childhood. The first section asked participants
for basic demographic information (e.g., age, gender,
major). Next, participants completed sections consisting
of context-specific sport participation rates during child-
hood. These sections were adapted from the framework
employed in Memmert et al. (2010), which, itself, drew
in part from Helsen, Starkes, and Hodges’s (1998) modi-
fied deliberate practice questionnaire for sport (based off
of Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Ro
¨mer’s, 1993, original
deliberate practice questionnaire related to the acqui-
sition of expert performance). The original instrument
is comprised of three sections with unique subscales
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 319
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measuring the sport experiences of participants over the
lifespan of their athletic careers. In the original instru-
ment, the first section of the questionnaire is designed
to gauge the general sport participation experiences of
the participant during the period between the ages of 5
and 14, which is the stage prior to the investment
stage of youth sport participation when most young
athletes specialize in a certain sport (cf. Co
ˆte
´, Baker,
& Abernathy, 2003). This section asked participants to
select all the sports that they participated in during this
period and to provide information about the quantity in
hours per week and months per year of their partici-
pation in each organized sport (Memmert et al., 2010).
The next two sections required participants to narrow
the scope of their responses to focus on the amount of
time they spent participating in their primary sport dur-
ing both their period of highest activity and on a yearly
basis. In the fifth section of the questionnaire, parti-
cipants subdivided their sport participation to reflect
the amount of time spent in unstructured, play-like
activities during elementary, middle, and high school.
In addition to retaining these sections from the
original instrument, newly developed sections asked
participants to identify the amount of time spent parti-
cipating in other leisure and artistic pursuits. These
additional sections followed the same structure and for-
mat as the original sections and included leisure pursuits
such as doing homework, watching television, playing
video games, surfing the Internet, reading, hanging out
with friends, nonsport physical activity (exercise), play-
ing outdoors, calling or text-messaging friends, partici-
pating in drama, doing art, playing music, and doing
creative writing. In all of the applicable sections in the
questionnaire, however, the age range that participants
were asked to consider in all sections was adjusted from
the original 5 to 14 age range to ask them to reflect on
time spent in the various activities during three periods
(elementary school, middle school, and high school) to
facilitate recall. Based on reports of the amount of hours
per week and months per year, the total number of
hours that each participant spent in his=her various
sport and leisure pursuits for each period in the parti-
cipant’s childhood was calculated and then these three
subtotals were multiplied by the respective number of
years spent in each period (i.e., five for elementary
school, three for middle school, and four for high
school). These three totals were then added together to
provide an overall estimate of the number of hours a
person spent in various sports and leisure contexts
during their childhood and adolescence.
One concern in asking participants to recall and esti-
mate time spent in various leisure activities and settings
over their lives is the reliability of participant estimates.
To investigate this concern, Memmert et al. (2010)
retested a random subset of their initial sample 2 months
following the administration of the initial test. The retest
of 10 participants indicated results that were adequately
reliable. To validate the self-reported information,
Memmert et al. calculated the percent agreement on
the items asking when the participants began training
(100%) and the number of sports they participated in
(88%) during the period from ages 5–14 (cf. Bahrick,
Hall, & Berger, 1996). Pearson correlations between
key items from the first and second tests produced
correlations above .70 on all items.
In our study, 10 participants were retested using the
same protocol employed by Memmert et al. (2010).
The percent agreement regarding when participants
began playing their primary sport (97%) and the number
of organized sports they identified participating in (86%)
demonstrated adequate reliability. In addition, Pearson
correlations between randomly selected items related to
hours spent playing various formal and informal sports
all exceeded .65. In short, although asking participants
to recall time spent in multiple activities and settings is
likely to produce inherently imprecise recollections, the
consistency and reliability of these recollections is suf-
ficient to support the relative accuracy of the findings.
Procedure
After the process of recruiting participants and gaining
their consent to participate, the ATTA was adminis-
tered. Following the completion of the ATTA, parti-
cipants then completed a 45-min childhood leisure
activities questionnaire pertaining to their sport and lei-
sure participation patterns in both structured and
unstructured settings during childhood and adolescence.
To ensure confidentiality during and after the research
process, participants did not provide any identifying
information on the questionnaires. Their responses to
the ATTA and the sport participation questionnaire
were matched through marking each with a correspond-
ing number and randomly distributed to participants.
To ensure participant privacy during the process, the
physical configuration of the research location was
arranged to provide ample space between participants,
and participants were given blank paper with which to
cover their responses. In addition, the completed crea-
tivity assessments and questionnaires were transported
in a sealed envelope following each data collection ses-
sion and stored in a locked filing cabinet in an on-
campus office. A password-protected computer housed
any data converted to digital form for analysis.
RESULTS
The correlations among errors across equations were
captured as an information matrix via joint generalized
320 BOWERS ET AL.
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least-squares to optimize power and the quality of
regression weight estimation across the equations with
a relatively small sample size. By estimating the equa-
tions for both the four dimensions of creativity and
the overall creativity index, it was possible to identify
not only the potential differential effects of the amount
of time spent in the two settings on a participant’s over-
all creativity, but in the different creative abilities which
partially comprise overall creativity. In other words,
through joint generalized least squares, it was possible
to test whether a particular setting might impact one
creativity ability, for example, but not another.
According to the results of the joint generalized least
squares regressions presented in Table 1, the null hypoth-
esis that hours spent playing sports in different sport
contexts in childhood have no effect on an individual’s
creativity in adulthood is rejected. As Table 1 demon-
strates, all models in which the five measures of creativity
(i.e., the overall creativity index and the four norm-
referenced creative abilities) were regressed on the total
number of hours participants reported playing organized
sport and informal sport were significant. Although
extensive demographic data were collected to serve as
potential control variables, there was little statistical evi-
dence to suggest an influence from these variables on the
creativity of the participants, which speaks to the strength
of the ATTA as a general measure of creativity.
The differential time spent playing organized sport
and informal sport explained roughly 14% of the variance
(R
2
¼.1395) in overall participant creativity. Although
this R
2
value might appear relatively small in terms of
statistical modeling, it explains a high level of variance
when considering the holistic nature of an individual’s
creativity, which beyond leisure participation habits, is
comprised of genetic=hereditary factors, schooling and
home backgrounds, and myriad other variables.
Table 1 offers a detailed analysis of the precise associ-
ation of participation in each of the sport participation
settings with the five measures of creativity. Examining
first the relationship between time spent playing either
organized sport or informal sport and the participant’s
overall creativity, both Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2
are confirmed. The results indicate a significant negative
relationship between overall creativity and hours spent
playing organized sport (B ¼.0004899; p<.05), and a
significant positive relationship between overall creativ-
ity and hours spent playing informal sport (B ¼
.0007914; p<.001). These unstandardized coefficients
may appear small upon first glance, but it is important
to remember that they are representative of thousands
of hours of leisure-time pursuits. In fact, using the
unstandardized coefficients, it is possible to calculate
the number of hours needed to be spent playing orga-
nized or informal sports in order to shift the z-score
one standard deviation, or 10.21 points on the overall
TABLE 1
Results of Joint-Generalized Least Squares Regression Models: Unstandardized Coefficients and Standard Errors (N¼99)
Model 1: Fluency Model 2: Originality Model 3: Elaboration Model 4: Flexibility
Model 5: Overall
Creativity
BSE BBSE BBSE BBSE BBSE B
Hours spent playing organized sports 0.0001239 0.0000835 0.0001741 0.0000608 0.0004012 0.0001138 0.000565 0.0000318 0.00048990.0002081
Hours spent playing informal sports 0.0002318 0.0000802 0.0001969 0.0000584 0.0003644 0.0001092 0.0001403 0.0000305 0.0007914 0.0001988
Intercept 12.60 0.62 6.31 0.45 11.58 0.84 2.36 0.24 66.59 1.55
pValue 0.01510.0011 0.0003 <0.0001 0.0003
R
2
0.0781 0.1204 0.1402 0.1769 0.1395
p<.05. p<.01. p<.001.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 321
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creativity index. Based on simple arithmetic (and the
negative direction of the unstandardized coefficient), it
can be determined that, on average with all else equal,
participants needed to spend 2,041.23 hr playing orga-
nized sports throughout their childhood and ado-
lescence to see a roughly 10-point deduction in their
creativity from the mean (which is a score of approxi-
mately 67 on the ATTA). On the other hand, parti-
cipants needed to spend only 1,263.58 hr playing
informal sports to see a roughly 10-point increase in
their creativity. Given the ATTA scoring rubric, these
standard deviations from the mean can represent the
difference between those individuals displaying below-
average creativity and those displaying above-average
creativity as adults.
Moreover, although these hour totals may appear
substantial initially, when spread over the course of an
entire childhood and adolescence, they reflect moderate
participation patterns. For example, for an adult partici-
pant to shift from average creativity (about 67 on the
ATTA scale) to relatively high creativity (about 77 on
the ATTA scale), the participant needed to spend
only—on average—1,263.58 hr playing informal sport,
all else equal. If these 1,264 hours are spread over (for
heuristic purposes) 12 years, only about 105 hr per
year—or about 2 hr per week—of playing informal sport
is required to see a relatively dramatic shift.
Table 1 also provides a more precise examination of
the results of the regressions with respect to each of
the four norm-referenced creative abilities. The results
show a consistent relationship between sport partici-
pation setting and the development of each of the four
norm-referenced creative abilities. With regard to flu-
ency (the ability to produce quantities of relevant ideas),
the number of hours spent playing informal sport was
significantly and positively related to participants’ abili-
ties to produce higher quantities of relevant ideas
(B ¼.0002318; p<.01). Using the same arithmetic refer-
enced in the preceding paragraph 4,314.06 hours were
needed to be spent playing informal sport in order to
shift the z-score one standard deviation from the mean
(these hours equate to an ability to produce 12.83 more
relevant ideas than average). In terms of originality (the
ability to produce unique or uncommon ideas), hours
spent playing organized sport and informal sport were
significantly negatively (B ¼.0001741; p<.01) and posi-
tively (B ¼.0001969; p<.001) related, respectively, to
participants’ abilities to not only generate quantities of
ideas, but quantities of unique ideas. To shift the z-score
one standard deviation (6.06) higher than the mean,
participants needed to have spent 5,078.72 hr playing
informal sports; to witness the roughly six-point
decrease from the mean, participants needed to have
spent 5,743.83 hr playing organized sports. Concerning
elaboration (the ability to embellish or develop ideas
with details), hours spent playing organized sport and
informal sport were also significantly negatively (B ¼
.0004012; p<.001) and positively (B ¼.0003644;
p<.001) related, respectively, to participants’ abilities
to develop ideas in greater detail. To produce a 10.62-
point shift from the mean, participants needed to have
spent 2,492.52 hours in organized sport to see a decrease
and=or 2,744.24 hours playing informal sport to see an
increase. Finally, total hours spent playing informal
sport was significantly positively related (B ¼.0001403;
p<.001) to participant flexibility, which is the ability
to process information in different ways given the same
stimulus. As with the previous interpretations, this result
signified that for participants to experience a one stan-
dard deviation shift in the z-score (or an increase of
2.62 in the number of different ways to process the same
stimuli), participants must have spent 7,127.58 hr play-
ing informal sports.
The descriptive examination of sport participation
backgrounds organized by creativity levels further eluci-
dates important patterns in these data. Table 2 presents
a breakdown of participant sport participation through
the lens of the ATTA categories of creativity (and with
respect to the normalized percentages of adults in each
category). In addition to providing the normalized
breakdown of creativity level, verbal assessment, and
the percentage of the adult population scoring in each
TABLE 2
Breakdown of Creativity Levels by Sport Participation (By percentage)
Creativity Index 1–50 51–59 60–67 68–73 74–77 78–84 85þ
Creativity level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Verbal assessment Minimal Low Below average Average Above average High Substantial
Normalized adult population 4% 12% 20% 26% 20% 12% 4%
Total sample 4% 21% 23% 27% 11% 9% 4%
Informal <Organized 4% 26% 32% 22% 9% 4% 3%
Informal >Organized 3% 10% 3% 40% 17% 20% 7%
Informal >Organized difference 1% 16% 29% 18% 8% 16% 4%
Organized sport time 72.1% 69.6% 74.4% 54.8% 56.9% 46.9% 49.8%
Informal sport time 27.9% 30.4% 25.6% 45.2% 43.1% 53.1% 50.2%
322 BOWERS ET AL.
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of these categories according to the ATTA, Table 2
includes five other variables calculated from the data.
The number of participants with more hours spent
playing informal sports (‘‘Informal >Organized’’) and
organized sports (‘‘Informal <Organized’’), respect-
ively, were calculated by subtracting the amount of
hours spent playing informal sport for each participant
by the amount of hours spent playing organized sport.
Participants were then dichotomized into groups based
on those with a positive difference (i.e., more hours
spent playing informal sport; n¼29) and those with a
negative difference (i.e., more hours spent playing orga-
nized sport; n¼70) and were converted to percentage
distribution in Table 2. The percentage differences
across the distribution of creativity levels between these
two groups was also calculated and reported as the
difference for participants with more hours spent in
informal sport (see variable ‘‘Informal >Organized Dif-
ference’’). Finally, the total amount of leisure time spent
playing sport of any type was calculated for each partici-
pant within each creative level and the average percen-
tages of this total sport time spent playing organized
sport (see variable ‘‘Organized Sport Time’’) and play-
ing informal sport (see variable ‘‘Informal Sport Time’’)
were examined within each creativity level.
For the group of participants who reported spending
more time playing organized sports than informal sports
(‘‘Informal <Organized’’), the percentage of parti-
cipants with average creativity or lower was higher than
(or equal to) the normalized distribution (i.e., no differ-
ence for Level 1; 14% higher for Level 2; 12% higher for
Level 3). The percentage of these participants scoring in
the above average or higher creativity levels was also
uniformly lower than the normalized distribution for
adult participants (i.e., 4% lower for Level 4; 11% lower
for Level 5; 8% lower for Level 6; 1% lower for Level 7).
Almost the exact opposite was true for participants who
reported spending more time playing informal sports
than organized sports (‘‘Informal >Organized’’). In all
but one of the levels, the percentage of these participants
in the below average or lower levels was lower than the
normalized distribution for the population, while also
being higher in the average and above categories. The
‘‘Informal >Organized Difference’’ variable indicated
that there was a clear difference in percentage within
each creativity level between ‘‘Informal >Organized’’
and ‘‘Informal <Organized’’: 1% lower in Levels 1;
16% lower in Level 2; 29% lower in Level 3; 18% higher
in Level 4; 8% higher in Level 5; 16% higher in Level 6;
and, 4% higher in Level 7.
Another compelling finding reported in Table 2 illus-
trates the disparities in ‘‘Organized Sport Time’’ and
‘‘Informal Sport Time’’ based on creativity level. For
those individuals with below average creativity, their
‘‘Organized Sport Time’’ was between 70–75%.
Participants with scores placing them into average or
higher levels of creativity report a much more balanced
distribution of time spent in each of the sport settings.
Moreover, participants with scores placing them into
FIGURE 2 Distribution of total leisure time for participants with
average creativity.
FIGURE 1 Distribution of total leisure time for participants with
below-average creativity.
FIGURE 3 Distribution of total leisure time for participants with
above-average creativity.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 323
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the two highest levels of creative ability report slightly
higher ‘‘Informal Sport Time.’’
The importance of balancing leisure time across mul-
tiple settings for creative development is also shown
through Figures 1, 2, and 3, which provide a percentage
breakdown of the amount of time spent in fifteen
different leisure activities throughout childhood and ado-
lescence. Again, Figure 1 illustrates that for those parti-
cipants who scored below average on their overall
creativity index, time spent in organized sport
represented a larger overall percentage of their leisure
activity (22%), whereas time spent in informal sport and
other leisure pursuits was comparatively smaller (10%).
In Figure 2, participants with average creativity indices
reported a greater balancebetween time spent in organized
sport (18%) relative to informal sport (14%) and the other
leisure activities (68%). In Figure 3, those participants with
above-average creativity reported an even greater balance
between numerous leisure pursuits (72%), while also
reported spending slightly less time in organized sport
(13%) than informal sport (15%) activities.
DISCUSSION
Given the retrospective nature of the data, the distal
results that emerge from this study are remarkable. In
fact, the results of this analysis offer stark evidence for
the importance of reconsidering the significance of the
informal sport setting as a critical factor in the sport
delivery equation. Not to be lost amidst the number of
smaller insights, the two overarching implications to
emerge from this analysis are broad in their scope yet
meaningful for their simplicity. First, from both an
elite-oriented sport development and mass-oriented
sport-for-development perspective, there is evidence in
these findings to support providing youth sport parti-
cipants with programming that transcends organized
sport alone. Specifically, the findings of this study pro-
vide support for the notion that informal, unstructured
sport settings matter to a child’s creative development,
hence demonstrating the potential benefits of a para-
digm shift toward more balanced, multi-setting youth
sport development models. Second, this study shows
that balancing the time spent in different settings makes
a difference in how participants are able to develop.
These two major contributions not only provide a solid
foundation on which to build future research, but also
take initial steps toward proposing a paradigm shift in
the field of youth sport development.
Unstructured Settings Matter
In general, the results from Table 1 provide clear evi-
dence for the relationship between playing informal
sports in unstructured settings and the development of
creativity. Based on the participants in this study, there
exists a direct positive relationship between time spent
playing informal sports as children and their levels of
overall creativity, fluency, originality, elaboration, and
flexibility as adults. The strongest relationship between
time spent playing informal sports and creativity was
seen on the development of creative flexibility, which
Goff and Torrance (2002) define thus: ‘‘Flexibility is
the ability to process information or objects in different
ways given the same stimulus. Flexible thinking is
especially important when logical approaches fail to
produce satisfactory results’’ (p. 26). This relationship
appears to be in line with previous research linking early
pretend play to the enhancement of cognitive flexibility
and increased divergent thinking (Russ 2004; Russ
et al., 1999). Given the characteristics of unstructured
sport settings, which foster autonomy and encourage
children to experiment in their play without having to
fear adult evaluation or adhere to a prescribed tech-
nique, the association of sport as play with flexibility
is not surprising. In more structured, organized sport
settings, children often are not given opportunities to
explore their kinesthetic boundaries because adults
(coaches and parents) instruct them in the so-called
correct technique that should always be followed.
Informal sports are not frivolous or counterproduc-
tive, as they implicitly can be cast by many adults who
view early specialization and organized instruction as
the key for children to develop into elite athletes (cf.
Co
ˆte
´et al., 2003). The findings from this study provide
support for the potential benefits of informal sport
played in unstructured settings, at least with respect to
developing creativity. Although, historically, children
have supplemented their organized play with informal
neighborhood and pickup sports, the opportunities for
children to participate in unsupervised play are becom-
ing less frequent. In the instances where neighborhood
and pickup sports are unlikely or nonexistent, sport pro-
viders can take steps to incorporate opportunities for
informal play into their programming. This suggestion
leads to the second important implication to emerge
from this study: Balancing organized and informal
sports is the key to increased creativity.
Balance is Key
The easy proclamation to make, given the confirmation
of this study’s hypotheses that overall creativity has a
positive relationship with time spent in unstructured
settings and a negative relationship with time spent in
organized settings, would be that those interested in
developing creativity avoid structuring their children’s
sport environment. From a practical standpoint, it
would be very difficult to remove all aspects of structure
324 BOWERS ET AL.
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and organization from a child’s youth sport partici-
pation. Thankfully, such a drastic reorganization is
not necessary to see significant differences. The crux of
these findings indicates that those individuals who
developed above-average creativity did not spurn orga-
nized sport for informal sport, but instead struck a
greater degree of balance between participation in the
two settings. As Table 2 shows, those participants with
the lowest general creativity spent nearly three-quarters
of their total sport time playing organized sports;
however, those with the highest levels of creativity spent
roughly equal time in both settings. Similarly, Figures 1
and 3 illustrate that those participants with below-
average creativity spent nearly a quarter of their total
leisure time playing organized sports, while spending
only one-tenth of that time playing informal sports.
Participants with above-average creativity, on the other
hand, spent slightly more of their overall leisure time
playing informal sports (16%) than organized sports
(13%).
These findings corroborate previous research that
highlights the importance of balancing the amount of
deliberate practice time with deliberate play (Co
ˆte
´,
Baker, & Abernathy, 2007). Spending a more balanced
amount of time in the two settings has even been shown
to increase the sport-specific creativity of elite athletes
(Memmert et al., 2010). Combined with Green’s (1997)
findings demonstrating the effectiveness of a modified
youth sport program which infused less-structured play
opportunities into an organized sport framework, the
case for promoting youth sport programming which
incorporates both organized and informal play is clear.
Moreover, outcomes such as creativity are possible
through simply redistributing practice and game time
to allow for more varied types of settings and experi-
ences, thus not requiring a complete reimagining of
entrenched youth sport development models. With this
in mind, this research is not a call to revolution; it is
the acknowledgement that, at least with respect to devel-
oping creativity through sport, a little balance can go a
long way.
Limitations and Future Research
Given the exploratory nature of this study and the lack
of empirical precedent for these research questions, the
results offer significant hope for developing a line of
research exploring the relationships between sport, crea-
tivity, and context. In spite of the relative strength of the
results, however, there are a number of limitations to the
findings reflected in the present analysis. First and fore-
most, the structure of these data and analysis did not
allow for testing whether a causal relationship exists
between time spent in different sport participation set-
tings and the development of creativity in children. At
this stage, the most that can be asserted is that there is
a relationship between the two; it is unclear whether cre-
ative people self-select out of organized sports or less
creative people self-select into it, which could certainly
influence the findings This area of research would there-
fore benefit from researchers with the resources to con-
duct experimental studies in which children can be
randomly assigned to participate in control or experi-
mental groups exposed to different sport settings.
Second, although this study explored the relationship
between participation in organized and unstructured
sport settings and creativity, it remains inconclusive
whether the findings are unique to sport as a leisure
pursuit, or whether the same types of differences might
be seen with respect to participating in organized and
unstructured settings in other leisure pursuits as well.
For example, would the same results emerge from an
analysis of time spent playing music in organized set-
tings versus unstructured settings? Future research can
test the extent to which the findings of this study speak
to a sport-specific phenomenon or a broader pattern in
many organized and unstructured leisure environments.
Third, the retrospective nature of the data collection
presented inherent limitations with regard to the
reliability of participant recall and responses. In spite
of the aforementioned test-retest reliability of a subsam-
ple of the participant responses, the accuracy of partici-
pant recollections of childhood activities does not yield
an ideal representation of childhood leisure experiences.
The assumption underlying the structuring of the data
collection in this manner was that the differences
between time spent in different activities would still be
conveyed with relative accuracy, even if the specific
hours spent per week and month may not have been
exactly the same as their childhood reality. In the future,
an experimental study with children like the one men-
tioned to address the first limitation would also mini-
mize reliability concerns through the contemporaneous
collection of data as children experience different leisure
activities and settings.
Finally, the sample in this study was limited by a
number of demographic constraints. Although the
demographic distribution reflected a reasonably accu-
rate gender, ethnic, and age representation for the uni-
versity setting from which participants were sampled,
this distribution is not representative of the general
young adult population. College students, on the whole,
would be expected to possess above-average intelligence
quotients compared to a typical young adult, which
could also impact their expected levels of creativity,
although research into this relationship is inconclusive
(e.g., Preckel, Holling, & Wiese, 2006). If anything, the
potentially higher levels of expected creativity would
indicate that the findings in this study are more con-
servative based on a restricted range. In addition, the
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUTH SPORTS AND CREATIVITY IN ADULTHOOD 325
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temporal demands associated with study participation
(1 hour) precluded a more diverse sampling of parti-
cipants and often necessitated working through con-
venience and snowball sampling as opposed to random
sampling. This reality led to a higher percentage of part-
icipants pursuing sport-related degrees with, presum-
ably, more extensive sport backgrounds. Each of these
issues increased the limitations of the study’s findings,
but could be ameliorated through conducting future
experimental studies that build off the foundation laid
in this research.
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