ABSTRACT
This study was carried out to investigate the influence of sports and recreation on the social well-being of secondary school students. To guide the study, five research questions were raised, out of which four were hypothesized and tested at 0.05 level of significance.
The descriptive survey research design was adopted in this study. The population of this study was made up of 18,106 students. The sample size of 300 was selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. The first stage involved purposive sampling technique used to select ten public secondary schools; secondly, simple random sampling technique was used to select 30 students from each school. The research instrument used for data gathering in the study was a self-structured questionnaire. The instrument was validated by the researcher’s supervisor and two other experts in the Department of Human Kinetics and Sports Science. The cronbach alpha statistics was used to establish the reliability of the instrument and the r-value of 0.907 was obtained. Data were analysed using inferential statistics (chi-square) for research questions 1 to 4 and 6 with the corresponding hypotheses and descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) for research question 5.
The findings revealed that there was a significant relationship between involvement in extra-curricular activities and students social well-being; there was a significant relationship between sports and recreational activities participation and students social skills; sports and recreation is significantly related to students self-esteem and confidence; sports and recreation is significantly related to students social relationships; there exist barriers to participation in sports and recreation among secondary school students; teachers, coaches/game masters and parents perception of role of sports and recreation and students social well-being is not significantly related. It was concluded that involvement in extra-curricular activities, sports and recreational activities participation, sports and recreation, is significantly related to students social well-being, social skills, self-esteem and confidence, and social relationships. Also, teachers, coaches/game masters and parents do not perceive sports and recreation as impacting on students social well-being. Lastly, it is evident that barriers exist as to sports and recreation participation among students. It was chiefly recommended that Students should engage in sporting activities to learn to cooperate within groups, imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship, thereby improving their social development.
