Impact of Self-Esteem and Body Image on Sports Participation of Female Athletes

Abstract

With reference to Pakistan, it has been observed that young female students are reluctant to take part in sports because of social pressures that affect their health in the long run. This research was conducted to examine the effect of self-esteem and body image on sports participation of female athletes mainly with two objectives i.e. to quantify the relationship between self-esteem and body image of sports participation of females and to quantify the impact of self-esteem and body image as motivators for sports participation of females. The purpose of selecting this topic was that both self-esteem and body image can play a major role to motivate females participate in sports. By applying the simple random sampling, a total of 200 female students were selected from four different universities to participate in the study.  These female students belonged to the physical education department of different universities of Lahore, Pakistan. Adapted questionnaires of Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (1965) and Offer Scale of Body-image (1972) were used to get the opinion of the participants. Results indicated a positively significant relationship between self-esteem and sports participation of female students as the values of the correlation were 0.317. In case of body image, positive significant relationship was observed between body image and sports participation as the value of correlation was 0.442. The research concluded that female students having high level of self-esteem and perfect body image, were more enthusiastic to participate in sports. The findings will help the physical trainers, instructors and teachers to find out the causes from the females who have low self-esteem.