The Relationship between Sporting Experiences and Resilience of

College Student Athletes in Japanese

Nobuhiro Takahashi

and Fumio Mizuochi

Graduate School of Literature and Social Sciences, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan

College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan

1 OBJECTIVES

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face

of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant

sources of stress (APA, 2008). In studies of

resilience. And studies are available on the

relationship of resilience to sports experience. In a

study of resilience and sports experience from

elementary school through university in a sample of

college students, Ogawa et al., (2011) found higher

resilience in students who had continuously

practiced sports. In this study we looked at whether

the acquisition of resilience differed by sporting

event type and years of sports carrier.

2 METHODS

2.1 Participants

308 students from A and B college with experience

practicing sports participated in the study. The

sample consisted of 166 men and 142 women, with a

mean age of 19.4±1.5 years.

2.2 Survey Items

1. Profile

Name, age.

2. Sports Practice Items

Current sport practiced, past sports practiced,

sporting events, years of experience, best

competitive performance.

3. The Adolescent Resilience Scale

The Adolescent Resilience Scale (Oshio et al., 2002)

consists of 21 items using a 5-point scale on 3

factors: Novelty Seeking, Emotional Regulation and

Positive Future Orientation. A higher score for each

factor is considered indicative of higher resilience.

2.3 Analyses

An unpaired t-test was used to look at differences

between the mean values for each of the scale’s 3

factors for the men and women. In addition, based

on participants’ current sport and sporting events,

we assigned them to “individual-sport” and “team-

sport” groups and used an unpaired t test to look at

differences in means between the two groups.

Participants were also divided into 3 groups

based on years of sports practice experience. Those

with the mean plus one-half of the standard

deviation or more years were assigned to the “long-

experience group (11 or more years); those with the

mean less one-half the standard deviation or fewer

years were assigned to the “short-experience” group

(1–5 years); and, the rest (6–10 years) were assigned

to the “average-experience” group. Single factor

analysis of variance was used to test for differences

in the means.

SPSS Statistics 21 was used for the tests and the

level of significance was set at 5%.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 1: Resilience factor scors (M/F).

No significant differences were shown between

the means for men and women.

The scores for the team sports group were

significantly higher than for the individual sports

Factor Scores

Males

Females

Novelty Emotional Positive Future

Seeking Regulation Orientation

Takahashi, N. and Mizuochi, F..

The Relationship between Sporting Experiences and Resilience of College Student Athletes in Japanese.

group for the factor Future Positive Orientation

(t(306)=3.543, p=.001).

Figure 2: Novelty seeking scores by sports type.

Figure 3: Emotional Regulation scores by sports type.

Figure 4: Future Positive Orientation Scores by Sports Type.

According to Ueno (2007) and Oshio et al.

(2002) people’s experiences of frequent painful life

events, provide resilience in critical situations.

Further, Tsuchiya et al. (2008) have suggested that

social support is important in controlling chronic

stress response in sports contestants. Compared to

team sports individual sports may provide fewer

social support resources, and athletes in individual

sports may have fewer opportunities to enjoy that

psychological benefit. In critical situations, they may

more frequently have to overcome adversity on their

own, which may facilitate the acquisition of a

positive future orientation.

A significant main effect was shown for Positive

Future Orientation for the 3 experience groups

(F(307)=3.961, p=.045). Post hoc tests showed that

the effect of the long-experience group was greater

than that of the short-experience group. Because

training can be experienced as stressful, more than a

few athletes have an aversion to it. The athletes with

a very long experience of practice may have scored

higher in Positive Future Orientation because it is

likely they experienced more painful life events

related to practice than those in the short experience

group.

Figure 5: Novelty seeking scores by years of practice

group.

Figure 6: Emotional Regulation scores by years of practice

group.

Figure 7: Future Positive Orientation Scores by years of

practice group.

These results showed that practicing individual

sports for a long time, 11 or more years, may

promote the acquisition of resilience in the form of a

positive future orientation.

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association, (2008). The Road to

Resilience, http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resi

lience.aspx

Oshio, A., Kaneko, H., Nagamine, S., & Nakaya, M.,

(2003). Construct validity of the Adolescent

Resilience Scale. Psychological Reports, 93, 1217-

Factor Scores

Team sports Individual sports

Factor Scores

Team sports Individual sports

FactorScores

=.001

Team sports Individual sports

Factor Scores

Short Average Long

Factor Scores

Short Average Long

Factor Scores

=.045

Short Average Long

1222

Ogawa, M., Matsuzaka, A., (2011) Influence that sporting

activities exert on resilience.

Ueno, K., (2007). Acquisition of the form of the faith and

a temporal view to a life skill through participation in

movement club activities. Physical education study

and 52, 49-60.

Tsuchiya, Y., Takahashi, K., Imai, M., Araya, M.,

Maebayashi, K., Sugao, T., Ishihara, M., (2008).

Osaka College of Physical Education Student

consultancy room sports counseling room activity

report. Osaka College of Physical Education bulletin.