Sports Participation and Social Development of Student-athletes and Non-athletes at University Level Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

Participation in sports is one of the elements that influence socialization and the improvement of interpersonal abilities, which begin at birth. The main purpose of the study is to determine the association between sports activities and social development of the athletes and non-athletes. A descriptive research approach was adopted with the sample size of 200 students (athletes: 100 and non-athletes: 100), who were randomly selected from the Benazir Bhutto University, Sheringal, Dir Upper, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. For evaluation of social development, the Wditzman’s questionnaire was used and for sports participation, the scale of Diani De Gill was used. Both descriptive and inferential statistics and SPSS-26 version was applied for the analysis of data. The results of the analyzed data indicated that sports activities positively influence social development of the athletes with the significance level (P > 0.05). The finding of the study demonstrated that social skill of the student-athletes was higher than non-athletes.