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- All Subjects: Sports management
- Creators: Legg, Eric
- Creators: Chuang, Shu-Tzu
Description
Playing tennis professionally is a stressful profession. However, it has the potential to be even more stressful for players who must move from their home country in order to train. If not dealt with, these stresses have the potential of causing many negative outcomes, including increasing levels of distress, in these professional tennis players. It is known that resources play a role in reducing or buffering levels of stress and distress among individuals, but there are competing theories as to how this occurs. Using Ensel and Lin's models of stress processes, this is an exploratory study that identifies the stresses and distresses professional Taiwanese tennis players face and the resources they use to cope. Participants included in this study are professional Taiwanese tennis players (2 males and 2 females) who continuously attend national and international tennis competitions and have both domestic and world ranks. Results from the semi-structured interviews revealed that challenges, frustration, resources, and toughness were four general themes to describe stresses and distresses professional Taiwanese tennis players face and the resources they use to cope. Future research for professional tennis players is also discussed.
ContributorsHung, Wei-Hsia (Author) / Rodriguez, Ariel (Thesis advisor) / Chuang, Shu-Tzu (Committee member) / Budruk, Megha (Committee member) / Hager, Mark A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Resettled refugees face numerous challenges including unsafe living conditions, loss of permanent shelter, adjustment to a new culture, loneliness, and separation from family, friends, and community. Of particular importance is the lack of a feeling of sense of community (SOC) within their new surroundings. SOC is not only worthwhile as an outcome of its own, but may also predict additional positive outcomes such as resilience and cultural adjustment. Literature has shown participation in sport can develop youth positively and build social skills, while studies in other regions of the world have also found a sport team setting to be a place for immigrants to experience SOC. In this study, I use a congruent mixed methods approach to both explore the experience of SOC for youth refugees in a soccer club, and examine the relation of SOC to resilience and cultural adjustment. Using photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews with 11 youth participants, the qualitative portion of the study explored SOC among youth participants. Findings note the presence of SOC as matched to theoretical frameworks both specific to sport, and to a more general theory of SOC. Further data were collected through questionnaires distributed to club members. Results from the quantitative analysis indicate a significant positive relation between SOC and resilience, and SOC and perceived acculturation. This study’s contribution is to illustrate how refugee youth in a sport club in the United States experience SOC, and the impact of that SOC. Results suggest practical implications for sport managers who wish to provide positive sport experiences for youth refugees.
ContributorsFader, Nina (Author) / Legg, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Larsen, Dale (Committee member) / Klimek, Barbara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Sports facilities are constructed across the United States using public subsidies and there is limited research about how the community benefits from these investments. Broader community benefits need to be established to justify public funding of sports facilities, including how social capital and sense of community are developed in a sport context. This research was composed of three studies that explored the benefit of providing access to sports events as a generator of social capital, the importance of developing social spaces at sports facilities to provide opportunities for attendees to nurture a sense of community and the value of virtual spaces in maintaining sense of community when isolated. The first study was a case study of Arizona State University (ASU) football season ticket holders to understand whether ticket donations to games can facilitate social capital by providing fans an opportunity to meet new people and develop long-term relationships. Findings indicated that donating tickets to sports events facilitate social relationships among fans that can build social capital, which advances existing research that focused primarily on the economic impact, and provides practical applications by encouraging sport managers to donate unused tickets. The second study examined sense of community by evaluating how fans use social spaces at a Denver Broncos National Football League (NFL) game and the Ironman World Championships (IWC). This study demonstrated that sense of community can originate in social spaces because attending a sport event and interacting in social spaces facilitates positive feelings about the community for the attendees. The third study focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sport participants’ sense of community. This study examined the impact the pandemic had on sense of community among members of USA Triathlon, the Olympic and Paralympic National Governing Body for the sport in the United States. The research showed that USA Triathlon members adopted alternative virtual engagement opportunities that replaced in-person activities and were not materially impacted by the pandemic. Overall, these three studies advanced the understanding of how sports events, whether in-person or virtual, can facilitate social capital and enhance sense of community.
ContributorsHarris, Rocky (Author) / Legg, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Budruk, Megha (Thesis advisor) / Andereck, Kathleen (Committee member) / Webb, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024