Student athletes' perceptions of self.

Todd, Samuel Y. ; Kent, Aubrey

Adolescence is considered to be a time of many changes and transitions, usually occurring between the ages of ton and nineteen (van Linden & Fertman, 1998). During adolescence, the individual's view of the self becomes more abstract and differentiated, resulting in more complex identity formation (Harter, 1986; van Linden & Fertman, 1998). Harter (1999) refers to this process as "the construction of the self" (p. 3), as individuals during this stage are discovering who they are and how they fit into the world.

Researchers believe that there are many influences on the construction of the self (Epstein, 1973; Gordon, 1968; Hatter, 1999; Marsh, 1986), one being the strong desire to feel part of a group (Seltzer, 1989). Therefore, family relationships, close friendships, and social acceptance are all factors that play a vital part in the adolescent's construction of the self. As these factors are usually considered to be individually unique and independent, they will only have an effect on the adolescent's self to the degree that the adolescent assigns a level of importance to each.

Rosenberg (1979) theorized that the construction of the self in many cases could be determined by contextual elements. He further asserted that religion, race, and areas of competence can all be contextual antecedents associated with the construction of the self in adolescents. The individuals self-concept may also be determined by comparison (favorable or unfavorable) with peers. For example, Seltzer (1989) found that adolescents frequently engage in behavioral comparisons when in the company of peers. By superimposing their self on peers, adolescents can begin to pick and choose various behaviors modeled by those peers until an acceptable identity is believed to have been achieved. Given that this acceptable identity periodically changes, Seltzer suggests that many strange and sometimes bizarre acts by youth can be attributed to this comparative process of behavior observation.

In recent years, researchers have given a great deal of attention to the relations between adolescent self-esteem and other variables, such as leadership, physical appearance and satisfaction with appearance, and locus of control (Chubb, Fertman, & Ross, 1997; Harter, 1999; McCullough, Ashbridge, & Pegg, 1994). Although McCullough et al. hypothesized that high school students identified as high in leadership potential would also be high in self-esteem, adolescent leaders were not found to have higher self-esteem than nonleaders. Knox, Funk, Elliott, and Bush (1998) attempted to identify the factors that are most closely associated with self-esteem for high school females and males. It was found that self-esteem in adolescent females was positively affected by financial descriptors, education, occupation, relationships, and physical appearance. Adolescent males' self-esteem was found to be associated with interpersonal functioning These findings are generally consistent with the hypothesis that peer relations are critically important during adolescence.

Physical appearance has also been reported to be a very important factor, as youth tend to treat attractive peers differently from unattractive peers (Cobb, Cohen, & Houston, 1998). Harter (1999) found that adolescents' global self-esteem correlated most highly with physical appearance, followed by scholastic competence, social competence, behavioral conduct, and athletic competence. Although self-esteem, or self-worth, and physical appearance appear inextricably linked, it is unclear whether physical appearance determines sense of self-worth, or, conversely, self-worth provides the foundation for satisfaction with physical appearance. Zumpf and Harter (1989) sought an answer by asking adolescents to indicate which of the two options best describes the relationship between self-esteem and physical appearance. Sixty percent of the adolescents indicated that physical appearance determined their self-worth.

Cobb, Cohen, and Houston (1998) examined self-discrepancy theory, which focuses on the congruence between one's perceived and desired self. Specifically, Cobb et al. investigated children's social behaviors in relation to physical appearance. Children were asked to nominate peers to play roles that were indicative of different behaviors, one of which represented sociability/leadership. It was found that children with a low discrepancy score, or those who believed that they appeared the way they should, received more leadership nominations from their peers. Further, Cherulnik, Turns, and Wilderman (1990) found a positive relationship between leadership and physical appearance in a study that involved leaders and nonleaders in a high school senior class. Cherulnik et al. gathered photographs of these subjects and asked volunteers to rate each photograph based on physical appearance, facial maturity, leadership status, and trait attributions. The leaders were consistently rated higher in each category, thus prodding evidence that physical appearance plays an important role in leader emergence

There has been some investigation into the relationship between self-esteem and selected leadership characteristics, but findings to date have been inconclusive. McCullough, Ashbridge, and Pegg (1994) tested the relationship between self-esteem and leadership behavior in adolescents. The hypothesis that the leadership group would have higher self-esteem was not supported. However, in the domain of sport, Glenn and Horn (1993) found a moderate relationship between self-esteem and leadership in adolescents. In addition, Engleman and Pease (1987) found that athletes who perceived themselves to be leaders on a team scored high on measures of self-esteem.

Other researchers have indicated that there is a relationship between body esteem and popularity (Graham, Eich, Kephart, & Peterson, 2000). In a study of high school students, Graham et al. found adolescents who were popular to be more satisfied with their bodies, although the body types of these individuals were not recorded. The directionality of the relationship between popularity and body esteem was not addressed in their study. That is, does perceived body esteem precede popularity, or is it a product of popularity? In other words, do adolescents feel better about their bodies as a result of their popularity, or are adolescents who feel better about their bodies more likely to be popular? Researchers are currently trying to clarify the issue (Harter, 1999).

Hence, questions still exist concerning the nature of gender and other characteristics in adolescents' constructions of the self. The purpose of the present study was to describe the development of self-perception in a sample of high school athletes and make comparisons with respect to gender and class level.

METHOD

Sample

The sample for this study consisted of 175 student athletes from three high schools in a southeastern U.S. city. There were 121 males and 54 females: 43 freshmen, 55 sophomores, 59 juniors, and 16 seniors. All were between the ages of 14 and 19. Each was a member of either a girl's or boy's team in one of the following sports: basketball, football, baseball, softball, volleyball, soccer, swimming, track and field, equestrian, tennis, cross-country, wrestling and crew. As some of the participants were under the age of 18, parental consent forms and student assent forms were included with the questionnaire. Anonymity was maintained by separating the questionnaires and consent/ assent forms immediately upon receipt of the completed package.

Instrumentation

The Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (Harter, 1988) was slightly modified for the present investigation. The original Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (SPPA) is a 45-item questionnaire that consists of five items for each of nine categories: global self-worth, scholastic competence, athletic competence, physical appearance, social acceptance, behavioral conduct, job competence, close friendship, and romantic appeal. Each item of the SPPA consists of two contrasting descriptions of an adolescent, appearing on opposite sides of the questionnaire (e.g., left side: "some teenagers have a lot of friends"; right side: "other teenagers do not have very many friends"). Respondents are first asked to choose which statement most describes them, either the one on the left or the one on the right. Next, they are asked to select whether this statement is "really true for me" or "sort of true for me." The general procedure is to score each item on a scale from 1 to 4, where 1 indicates low perceived competence or adequacy and 4 reflects high perceived competence.

In agreement with Wichstrom (1995), we felt that the format of the SPPA has several disadvantages. First, the presentation of two descriptions of an adolescent for each item doubles the amount of text that respondents must read. Second, the question format is somewhat confusing for youth. In fact, Marsh and Holmes (1990) found that 31% of their subjects misunderstood the format. In light of this, a revised version of the SPPA was used in the present study. In this version, only the description on the left side of each item in the original version is presented, and stated in the first person; for example, "I have a lot of friends." Similar to the original version, the revised SPPA has four response options: (1) describes me very well, (2) describes me fairly well, (3) describes me a little, and (4) does not describe me at all. The scoring also replicates the original format in that a score of 1 is assigned to the lowest perceived competence and 4 is assigned to the highest perceived competence on that item.

For the purposes of this study, only five of the original nine subscales were of interest: scholastic competence (SC), athletic competence (AC), physical appearance (PA), social acceptance (SA), and self-worth (SW). Two items from each of the first four were used to evaluate the relative importance that adolescents attributed to the specific categories (no items were included from the self-worth subscale). The participants rated each item (e.g., "I think it is important to be intelligent") in the following manner: (1) very true, (2) fairly true, (3) not really true, and (4) never true.

RESULTS

Wichstrom (1995) reported better internal consistencies in the revised SPPA than in the original SPPA for every dimension (SC = .69 vs..60, SA = .76 vs. .56, AC = .79 vs. .66, PA = .87 vs. .76, SW = .77 vs. .68). The mean alpha for the revised version was .77, while the mean alpha for the original version was .67. The revised version also demonstrated superior convergent validity as compared to the original version. Evidence of convergent validity was found for all subscales in the revised version. In the present study, each subscale demonstrated acceptable reliability (alpha): SC = .74, SA = .79, AC = .66, PA = .77, SW = .72.

The data were analyzed using frequency tables and mean scores for both the overall sample and for the demographic subgroups (see Table 1). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to assess differences among the groups in each of the five subscales. Results from the one-way ANOVAs revealed some interesting findings. Males had a significantly higher mean score on the athletic competence subscale than did females, F(1, 173) = 7.09, p < .01. All other differences in subscale means based upon gender were negligible. Comparison of means based upon class (year in school) yielded no significant findings.

The results of the ANOVA for the importance of the four subscales to each participant (self-worth was assumed to be of importance to all adolescents and therefore was not included in the assessment of relative importance) revealed that males viewed both athletic competence, F(1, 176) = 5.92, p < .02, and social acceptance, F(1, 176) = 4.45, p .04, as significantly more important than did females. There were no significant differences in the relative importance of the remaining two subscales based upon gender. There were also no significant differences in the relative importance of each subscale based upon class level.

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to examine high school athletes' self-perceptions on the five variables of athletic competence, social acceptance, physical appearance, scholastic competence, and self-worth, and to compare these perceptions based upon gender and class level. It was found that males scored significantly higher on the athletic competence subscale than did females. This was congruent with findings reported by Hagborg (1993). Interestingly, the mean athletic competence score of the males in the present study was 3.25, whereas Hagborg, who examined a general student sample, reported a much lower mean (2.84). This difference, although involving two separate studies and samples, suggests that athletes have a higher opinion of their athletic competence than do nonathletes. In fact, Asci, Gokmen, Tiryaki, and Asci (1997) found that Turkish athletes scored significantly higher in athletic competence than did nonathletes. It is to be expected that athletes would have a higher level of confidence in their athletic competence than regular students, but it is interesting that the sample of males in the study by Hagborg (1993) still rated themselves significantly higher in athletic competence than did females. Unlike Hagborg, who also found males to score significantly higher on the physical appearance subscale, the current study found no significant differences in physical appearance based upon gender or class.

It should also be noted that, in this study, the mean score of females on the self-worth subscale was slightly higher than that of males. Although the difference was not significant, several other studies (Harper & Marshall, 1991; Marsh, 1989; Simmons & Blyth, 1987) found that girls' self-esteem was significantly lower than that of boys.

In addition, this study investigated the importance placed on each category (except self-worth). Males viewed athletic competence and, to a lesser extent, social acceptance as significantly more important than did females. These findings support the common notion that male athletes are especially proud of their athletic involvement and accomplishments and that there is carryover to their psychological development and construction of the self. Moreover, it is entirely possible that adolescents in general define who they are by whom they are surrounded by. It is equally conceivable that members of any high school group (i.e., band, student council) would share some of the same aspects of identity and would be more similar in these areas than outsiders.

One final issue in the relevant research on adolescent self-perception worth noting here is that of possible selves (Knox, Funk, Elliott, & Bush, 1998, 2000; Markus & Nurius, 1986). Possible selves are self-conceptions that include both what an individual hopes to become and what he or she fears becoming (Knox et al., 1998). There can exist a substantial discrepancy between an adolescent's hypothetical image of the self and the current self. This discrepancy could have significant implications for the adolescent's self-esteem, depending on which possible self he or she relates to at any given time. Future research should address this topic. Table 1 Descriptive Statistics for Subscales of the SPPA SC SA AC M SD M SD M SD Males (n = 121) 3.31 .535 3.45 .566 3.25 .466 Females (n = 54) 3.43 .487 3.43 .488 3.02 .634 Freshmen (n = 43) 3.33 .547 3.47 .516 3.18 .520 Sophomores (n = 55) 3.37 .559 3.43 .595 3.25 .505 Juniors (n = 59) 3.36 .498 3.48 .550 3.15 .559 Seniors (n = 16) 3.27 .431 3.31 .438 3.10 .580 PA SW M SD M SD Males (n = 121) 3.19 .602 3.45 .505 Females (n = 54) 3.02 .639 3.52 .457 Freshmen (n = 43) 3.19 .570 3.45 .448 Sophomores (n = 55) 3.11 .646 3.46 .548 Juniors (n = 59) 3.11 .683 3.53 .463 Seniors (n = 16) 3.29 .521 3.44 .512 Note. SC = Scholastic Competence; SA = Social Acceptance; AC = Athletic Competence; PA = Physical Appearance; SW = Self-Worth

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