Fourteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

The objective of the study is to investigate the effects of small-sided recreational basketball on self-esteem, motivation to exercise, and depression. Participants were 24 male untrained males randomly assigned equally into two groups; intervention group (IG) and control group (CG). Three a side supervised recreational basketball was offered to participants in IG for 12 weeks. Games were played on the half-court for 30 minutes, twice a week. Between-group differences in delta values (post minus pre-values) were tested by independent T-Test. For statistical significance, P-value was set at 0.05. T-Test revealed a significant difference in depression (t20 = 2.183, P = 0.042) between the two groups, with mean depression of 4.72 ± 2.05 and 8.45 ± 2.62 in IG and CG respectively. Whereas no difference was seen in self-esteem scores in both groups (t20 = -0.105, P = 0.918) where mean self-esteem was 24.45 ± 3.44 and 21.09 ± 5.50 in IG and CG respectively. None of the sub-scale BREQ-2 had shown significant improvement. Amotivation (t20 = 0.867, P = 0.396), External regulation (t20 = 1.074, P = 0.296), Introjected regulation (t20 = 0.279, P = 0.783), Identified regulation (t20 = 0.833, P = 0.415), Intrinsic regulation (t20 = -0.260, P = 0.798). Small-sided recreational basketball has shown a favorable reduction in symptoms of depression among participants. Our program was not effective in improving motivation towards exercise and there is no significant increase in the self-esteem of participants.