2021 Volume 18 Issue 1 Pages 31-44
This research focused on the attitudes and interest regarding COVID-19 of student athletes with differing track records of competition participation. The purpose of this research was to clarify the degree of awareness and interest that varies depending on COVID-19 had on these study subjects.
An online questionnaire was administered to students in universities across Japan that belonged to sports clubs at their universities. The 637 students from whom questionnaire responses were received were divided into two groups: students who had competed in university competitions at the Japanese nationwide level or above ("nationwide competition group") and students who had competed in regional competitions ("regional competition group"). Fischer’s exact test was performed to cross-tabulate the results, and quantitative text analysis was performed on free answer data.
The analysis showed that students in the nationwide competition group felt greater psychological uncertainty than students in the regional competition group regarding COVID-19 infection and the impact of COVID-19 on their lives and career development. For the nationwide competition group, the loss of opportunities to build up a track record in competitions that would contribute to their careers following graduation was a major anxiety factor, and there was a significant difference between the nationwide competition group and the regional competition group.
Co-occurrence network analysis also identified differences in the agents that caused anxiety between the nationwide competition group and the regional competition group. The former felt anxiety regarding chaos in university and club activity trends, while the latter felt uncertainty regarding university-side decision-making and club activity policies. Detailed analysis will need to be performed regarding the approach to take to college sports in the COVID-19 world, and we hope that our research can serve as the exploratory research that leads to this future research.