Occupying the crease: an exploration of youth cricket in New Zealand

Recruiting and retaining participants is a challenge that most sport administrators face. The present study examined motives for participation/discontinuation in cricket, propensity to play in the future, and the influence that various initiatives had on youths' propensities to play. A nationwide survey of 858 young New Zealand cricketers revealed six underlying motives for participating in cricket: team, competition, mastery, extrinsic rewards, fitness and being active, with the first three of these being the strongest predictors of propensity to play. Together the six motives explained 17% of the variance in propensity to play. None of the initiatives tested increased the likelihood of playing cricket for those who were currently involved. For those who had stopped playing, their reasons for ceasing were most likely to be the lure of other sports or activities. Nonetheless, initiatives that increased their chances of participating in cricket again were playing in a social competition, having better equipment, having less costly equipment, and being provided with the opportunity to meet top players. These findings have important implications for cricket administrators in terms of the management and promotion of youth cricket in New Zealand.

"So that's when I thought to myself : 'my life is just horrible'" : everyday judgements of life satisfaction

Objectives : The study was designed to investigate life satisfaction (l.s.) judgments as they occur spontaneously in everyday life, rather than being constructed in response to a researcher's question.
Methods : A convenience sample of 50 adults from Melbourne, Australia, was employed.
Half had at least some university education; the other half did not. In an in-depth, structured interview, participants were asked to recall – if they could do so – an occasion when they had spontaneously made a judgment about their l.s. The circumstances in which the judgment had been made and the thoughts that had entered into it were elicited.
Results : Main findings included :
(a) All participants were able to recall an occasion when they had spontaneously made a l.s.
judgment.
(b) Judgments that life was good and that life was bad were equally common.
(c) Judgments invariably involved comparisons with various standards (e.g., what one had versus
what one wanted, what one had versus what one deserved, what one had versus what one
expected to have).
(d) However, upward and downward social comparisons were relatively rare.
(e) Judgments were commonly based on events relating to just one or two areas of life, rather
than a review of many different areas.
(f) The areas of life involved were invariably those impacting very directly on participants.
(g) While the thoughts entering into the judgment generally went beyond consideration just of a
specific situation, they usually did not encompass large sweeps of time.
(h) There was very little to distinguish judgments of more- and less-educated participants.
Conclusions : Findings are compared and contrasted with those typically obtained using the more standard approach of asking participants to rate their 1.s.