Parents' Appraisals, Reflected Appraisals, and Children's Self-Appraisals of Sport Competence: A Yearlong Study

This study investigated the contribution of the reflected appraisal process to the ontogeny of children's self-perceptions of physical competence. Emanating from symbolic interactionist thought, reflected appraisals refer to individuals' perceptions of others' evaluations of their abilities. The influence of parents' appraisals of their child's competence on the child's self-appraisals was hypothesized to be mediated by parents' reflected appraisals. Data were collected from a sample of 147 sixth graders and their parents in three waves over one school year. Structural equation modeling revealed that 1) parents' appraisals at Wave 1 influenced children's reflected appraisals of parents at Wave 2; 2) reflected appraisals at Wave 2 influenced children's self-appraisals at Wave 3, controlling for both the child's actual level in sport (as assessed by the child's grade in physical education) and the child's self-appraisals at Wave 1; and 3) the influence of parents' appraisals on their child's self-appraisals was nonsignificant when reflected appraisals were controlled for. This study supported the mediational role of the reflected appraisal process. The findings from this study provide a unique contribution to the sport socialization knowledge base by highlighting the role of the reflected appraisal process in the formation of children's self-appraisals of ability.

Julien E. Bois is now at the “Laboratoire d'Analyse de la Performance Sportive,” Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, France.

This study was facilitated by a grant from two French sport organizations: the ‘Direction Départementale de la Jeunesse et des Sport 26’ and the ‘Comité Départemental Olympique et Sportif de la Drôme.’ We thank Virginie Nicaise who helped in the data collection of the study

Notes

¹We used alternatively the terms “sport” or “physical activity,” because in France the two have a very similar meaning and designate all forms of exercise and leisure-time physical activity.

²The covariance matrix used for this analysis is available upon request to the second author.

³Omission of the three error covariance between measurement error of indicators of reflected appraisal resulted in a poorer fit of the model: χ² (129, N = 147) = 425,24, p < .001, NNFI = .71, CFI = .76, SRMR = .09, Δ χ² (df = 3) = 202,5, p < .001. To the extent that the same person (i.e., the child) answers to questions where only the word “father” or “mother” change, the error covariance has to be seen as method variance due to the similarity of the items.

⁴Reliability estimates for the total scales are obtained by (Bollen, 1989): ρ = (Σλ i)²/((Σ λ i)²+ Σ δ ii) where λ i are the factor loading and δ ii the error variances.

⁵Omission of the three insignificant paths did not significantly alter the fit of this model: χ²(144, N = 147) = 231.92, p < .001, NNFI = .93, CFI = .94, SRMR = .06.