Athletes and Non-Athletes’ Life Satisfaction

Abstract

It is expected athletes to be more satisfied with their life than non-athletes, because sport plays an important role for health, life satisfaction and well-being, as sports activities give satisfaction because being recreational. Life satisfaction was studied in Bulgarian athletes and non-athletes as overall life satisfaction by means of the Satisfaction with Life-Scale and as satisfaction with different life domains measured by several single items. The results indicated that there were not any significant differences in general life satisfaction between the participants practicing sport regularly and the participants who did not practice any sport. However, the athletes were more satisfied with their health status, their relationships with their friends, and their performance than the non-athletes. For all the participants, general life satisfaction correlated significantly and positively with satisfaction with different life domains – own financial situation, own achievements, personal growth, familial financial situation, own health status, own performance, relationships with friends, relationships with family, and relationships with colleagues. As some other authors have also found, the results on the Satisfaction with Life-Scale correlate positively with some other measures of life satisfaction.