Well-Being of Japanese Collegiate Student Athletes: A Preliminary Study in Comparison to Non-Athletes

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the well-being of collegiate student athletes, addressing both psychologicaland subjective well-being. Collegiate student athletes and non-athletes were recruited via snowball samplingusing email to complete an online survey that queried their psychological and subjective well-being. Threehundred and fifty-one respondents completed the survey. Eleven respondents failed the attention check andwere excluded from the analysis. One hundred and ninety-seven collegiate student athletes and 143 nonathleteswere included in the final analysis. The survey utilized the 43-item Psychological Well-Being Scale,the 5-item Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the 12-item Affective Well-Being Scale to assess psychologicaland subjective well-being. Mann Whitney U analyses were utilized to discover differences in scores on eachquestionnaire between the athlete and non-athlete groups. The athlete group reported higher scores in the selfacceptancesubscale of the Psychological Well-Being Scale compared to the non-athlete group (P=0.044).The positive relationship with others subscale of the Psychological Well-Being Scale were lower in the athletegroup compared to the non-athlete group and while the difference approached statistical significance (P=0.053), it did not meet our criterion alpha (0.05). No significant differences were found in other subscales ofthe Psychological Well-Being Scale between the two groups (P<0.05). The Satisfaction with Life Scale wassignificantly higher in the athlete group compared to the non-athlete group (P=0.003). No significantdifferences were observed between the athlete and non-athlete groups in positive and negative affect scores onthe Affective Well-Being Scale (P<0.05). This study highlighted collegiate student athletes had greater selfacceptanceand better life satisfaction compared to non-athletes. Findings may offer valuable insights into thewell-being benefits associated with high levels of physical activity and participation in sports competition.Further research is required to explore the effects of sports on well-being, considering characteristicsassociated with various sports and levels of competition.