Effects of a sport-based positive youth development program on youth life skills and entrepreneurial mindsets

Sport-based life skills interventions offer compelling pathways to understanding the role of physical activity and sport on youth psychosocial and other development outcomes. This is because of evidence that shows the benefits of sport programs to health and well-being of youth, and more lately other areas such as academic achievement and various life skills such as teamwork, leadership and goal setting. However, much of the research in this area of youth development is largely descriptive, with limited capacity to infer causal relationships and application across contexts. Therefore, this study examines the effects of a sport-based intervention program on life skills and entrepreneurial mindsets of youth from three African countries (n = 146, average age = 15.9 years, female = 48.6%). Half of the recruited participants were assigned to a three-week life skills intervention program and the remaining half to a sport-only control program. Both groups completed a demographic information questionnaire, Life Skills for Sport Scale and the General Enterprising Tendency v2 test. Two-way mixed ANOVAs showed significant post-intervention changes in life skills for both groups but changes in entrepreneurial mindsets for the intervention group only. This demonstrates the relevance of sport-based interventions to youth development outcomes in different contexts and the transformative potential of youth sport reported in previous studies. The findings have important implications for intentional and targeted delivery of programs to enhance specific youth development outcomes.