Physical self-description and sport participation, by gender, of university students

Abstract

University students, who are regular sport participants, showed a superior and more positively physical selfdescription in body fat, general physical self-concept and self-esteem perception (Silva, Vicente, Amaro, & Campos, 2016). In another study with university students, in order to investigate what they think about their own physical appearance (Silva, Saenger, & Pereira, 2011), it was concluded that 63% of male and 67% of female students presents dissatisfaction, although for contradictory reasons (female students were dissatisfied due to overweight; male students were dissatisfied due to the thinness index). Considering this, based on the presented studies, the aim of this research is to characterize and compare sport participants by gender - students of the Cuenca Campus of the Universidad Castilla La Mancha (Spain) - according 4 (four) dimensions of their physical self-description: (1) body fat; (2) general physical self-concept; (3) self-esteem; (4) physical appearance. It was applied a reduced version of the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ), translated to Spanish (Tomás, 1998). The data were collected from 175 university students (22,00±3,41 years old), regular sport participants (at least once per week): 86 females (21,15±1,99 years old) and 89 males (22,82±4,18 years old). After the application of the ANOVA one-way test is possible to confirm, comparing the male with the female sport participants, that there are no statistical significant differences in the dimensions: body fat (F=0,001; p=0,973); self-esteem (F=0,186; p=0,667); physical appearance (F=0,748; p=0,388). In contrast, there are statistical significant differences in general physical selfconcept dimension (F=4,269; p=0,040), having the male participants a higher mean of answer values (M=4,643).