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Participation in Youth Power Sports
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- Author / Creator
- Bragg, Elaine
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Playing team sports provides many benefits including opportunities for children and adolescents to experience physical and social growth. Research regarding child and youth participation in wheelchair sports, particularly power wheelchair sports, is limited and qualitative research that has the potential to provide insight into the experience of children and adolescents who use power wheelchairs to play sports is scarce. The main purpose of this thesis was to provide insight into the experiences of power soccer players and their parents in order to inform rehabilitation practice. This thesis is comprised of two studies: a scoping review (Chapter 2) and a qualitative study (Chapter 3). The scoping review described research related to group physical activities and sports with children and adolescents who used wheelchairs to participate. The results confirmed a lack of studies focused on child and youth power sport participation. The qualitative study focused on gaining insight into player and parent experiences with power soccer (Chapter 3) using interpretive descriptive methodology. Observation and semi-structured interviews with five players and 3 parents were completed. Five themes were developed: 1) Level Playing Field, 2) I am an Athlete, 3) Sports Equate to Life – “Life Lessons”, 4) Value of belonging to a Community, and 5) The Roles of Rehabilitation Community in supporting Power Mobility Sports. Recommendations and clinical implications for practitioners are discussed and areas of future research are identified.
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- Graduation date
- Spring 2019
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Science
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- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.