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Abstract:
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Sport participation in the United States is often characterized as a unitary experience that naturally instills a standardized set of values . In this work , however , I challenge the mythology of a unitary conceptualization of sport participation and examine how the experiences and outcomes of playing sports change depending on the setting in which the participation occurs . Specifically , I undertake an investigation into the differences between playing sports in an organized setting and playing them in an informal , unstructured setting . Drawing from the findings of three distinct studies , I first demonstrate through a mixed -method historical study how the field of sport management has narrowed its focus over time to exclude the more playful forms of sport and physical activity . In the second and third studies , I show the experiential and developmental outcomes that are potentially overlooked by maintaining a narrow definition of sport that excludes sport played in unstructured settings . In the second study , a phenomenological examination of pre -teen youth sport participants reveals that the meaning of the experience of playing youth sports derives not from playing in one setting alone , but emerges through the synthesis of experiences accrued in both organized and unstructured settings . In the third study , the relative influences of time spent participating in organized sports and informal sports during childhood are assessed with respect to the development of participant creativity . Like the phenomenological study , the results of this quantitative analysis again point to the importance of balancing participation in both organized and unstructured settings . The most creative individuals are those who split their sport participation time across both settings , as opposed to individuals with below -average creativity , who spent the majority of their sport participation time in organized settings . Combined , the results of these three studies demonstrate the historical shift (in both research and practice ) away from unstructured sport settings , and highlight the potentially transformative sport development implications of reincorporating unstructured sport settings on the overall experiences and outcomes of sport participation . |