Contemporary prospects of youth sports and social integration among adolescents

Sports events conducted in conjunction with the curriculum may serve as a supportive factor in the development of social integration among adolescents attending school. The aim of this study is to examine how adolescent participation in various sports activities, specifically football, volleyball, athletics, and tennis, affects their level of social integration and social engagement. The study involved 400 adolescents (aged 13-15) from a single school in Ukraine. Data were collected using the Social Integration Scale (SIS-A) and the Social Engagement Scale (SCE-A), which were specifically developed for this research. The study employed a pre-test/post-test design with control and intervention groups over the course of one academic year. The results indicate that sports-based interventions were associated with improvements in social integration, with a significant increase in SIS-A scores across the four sports subgroups (p = .000), whereas the control group showed no significant changes. However, no significant improvements in social engagement were found in any group, including those involved in sports. This suggests that while sport may support social integration, it does not necessarily contribute to broader civic participation, particularly in the absence of explicit civic education or community-oriented activities within the intervention. The highest observed effects were in the football subgroup. Volleyball participation led to moderate improvements in social integration, while individual sports (e.g., athletics, tennis) had comparatively smaller effects. These findings underscore the importance of distinguishing between different dimensions of social development and highlight the need for more targeted approaches to enhance civic engagement among adolescents. The present results indicate that participation in sports events can contribute to social integration, although such effects should be interpreted with consideration of contextual and methodological limitations.