engleski

Cardiovascular and Emotional Reactions of Parents during their Child’s First Sport Competition

Over the years, many studies have investigated cardiovascular patterns in sport situations. However, only few studies have focused on investigating parental cardiovascular reactions during children’s sport competitions. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to document parental cardiovascular and emotional reactions during their child's first sport competition. The study was conducted on a mother and a father of a child during a small club competition in one Croatian judo club. Their daughter had three fights, two of which she won two and one of which she lost. During the whole competition, parents wore a device made by Firstbeat Technologies which constantly monitored their heart rate. To analyze the results obtained during the measurement, we used the Firstbeat SPORTS Software. To measure the emotions of the parents during the event, we applied the PANAS scale, which the parents filled in 6 times each (before and after each fight). Parents were also asked to answer two open-ended questions regarding their thoughts and expectations before and after the competition. The results indicated that both of the parents experienced low levels of stress during the competition, although the mother predicted her stress would be moderate. Furthermore, both parents had similar cardiovascular reactions during their daughter's fights. It is evident that their reactions were more intense during the fights in comparison to time before/after the fights and during the 5-min resting period. However, their reactions differed in intensity and duration. The emotional profiles indicate that the mother reported stronger emotional reactions. On the other hand, both parents reported experiencing more positive than negative emotional reactions during the whole event. Even though this study included only one set of parents, these results suggest that reactions of the parents during the competitions of their children is an interesting topic which should be further investigated.

Sport psychology, Parents in Sport, Stress

nije evidentirano