The contribution of sport to prosocial behavior in youth

Abstract

For proper organization of sport and physical education in general, it is necessary to obtain empirical evidence on how sport influences youths' social and moral development. To that effect, the research aim was to provide empirical data on the existence or non-existence of a connection between doing sport and prosocial behavior of the young. An appropriate questionnaire of pro-social behavior estimation was implemented on the sample of 61 students aged 12-14. The research findings show that there is a significant difference in the level of display of certain forms of prosocial behavior among the young athletes and their peers that are not engaged in some organized sport activities. Further, it was established that the type of sport influences the level of pro-social behavior manifestation. It was not found whether the length of doing sport is correlated with the pro-social behavior of adolescents. The results obtained point that organized sport activities represent the context having positive effects on the development of pro-social behavior of the young.