Effect of a sport leadership programme on students’ perception of their professional development as a measure of involvement

Abstract

The European Union stresses the importance of sport as a tool for social and economic development, although there are still few intervention programmes that have been analyzed, it is justified that this type of programme should be carried out in universities. The main objective of this intervention was to analyze whether significant differences would occur after the programme intervention in the analyzed transversal competences of the student volunteers as a measure of involvement. Participated 61 university students (29 female and 32 males, Mage = 23.20 years, SDage = 9.79). Two tests were carried out, at the beginning of the intervention (pre-test) and after 24 months of the intervention (post-test). There were improvements from pre-test to post-test in organization and planning (Δ = .07, d = .35), management of knowledge and information (Δ = .10, d = .32), emotional control (Δ = .09, d = .39), autonomous work (Δ = 0.03, d = .40) and adaptation to new situations (Δ = 0.01, d = .35). According to the effect sizes, the differences were significant in practical terms. Consequently, this means that the students were more involved regarding the pre-test measures. The present work was the first one carried out enacting a European programme on sport leadership assessed on students’ own perception of relevance about their competences as a measure of involvement. In future studies it must be analyzed the actual effect of this program on participants’ competences.