03. Teenage Development and Extreme Sports.
If I was conducting research as a graduated student and had limitless resources, I would choose to research the cognitive and emotional development of teenagers who participate in extreme sports. I’m interested in this topic primarily because it reflects my own teenage years – I did not participate in team sports but did I participate in mountain bike racing and alpine skiing. I’m very curious as to how this choice affected my development and how my background has affected my adult life, not only in my lifestyle choices, but in my emotional regulation and sense of self.
The sports I would focus on are rock-climbing, cross-country mountain biking, alpine skiing, and snowboarding. I think there is a lot of benefit that can be gained from participation in extreme sport and a study on how participation in these sports affects teenagers would help the sports to further join the mainstream and become more normalized. Finances are often a barrier for teens when it comes to participation in extreme sports, so I would specifically hope to see high school students in Thunder Bay benefit from this sport by an increased access to opportunities to try extreme sports. Ideally, more schools would adopt more extreme sports as electives and extracurriculars. Currently, some schools have the option to take skiing or snowboarding as an elective, and most have the option to mountain bike race as an extracurricular. I would want to see snowboarding and skiing be offered as an elective across the board and for mountain biking and climbing to be offered as extracurriculars at minimum.
My reason for focusing on extreme sport is that even at a glance, there is some contrast between extreme sports and team sports. Extreme sports usually involve individual goals rather than teamwork. Extreme sports involve flow states, high competency, and an aspect of danger. Due to their intense nature, extreme sports can be a way of striving for self-actualization and promoting positive personal change. Their uncertain nature provides opportunity for intense cognitive development and emotional dimension (Cohen et. Al, 2018). Teens are known for risk taking behaviours, and channeling those impulses into extreme sports would have positive outcomes.
I would love to study how participating in extreme sport affects a teenager’s sense of self-efficacy, confidence, emotional regulation, and independence, and how these aspects are carried into their adult lives. This tracking would have to take place over a 10-year period, from age 15 -25. This period spans from adolescence until the frontal lobe has fully developed (Arain et. al, 2013), giving a considerable window to see how participation affects the participants as teenagers and the benefits they carry into their adult lives.
My research method would be qualitative and quantitative – I would want to survey the participants twice a year for 10 years. The frequency is due to most extreme sports being weather dependent and therefore having an on and off-season. I want to collect qualitative opinions from the participants themselves, as well as concrete quantitative measures of cognitive development. Having such a long period would require renewed consent as the study continued.
References
Arain, M., Haque, M., Johal, L., Mathur, P., Nel, W., Rais, A., Sandhu, R., & Sharma, S. (2013). Maturation of the adolescent brain. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 9, 449–461. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S39776
Cohen, R., Baluch, B., Duffy, L. (2018). Defining Extreme Sport : Conceptions and Misconceptions. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01974
Photo: Powder Day. Taken By Jill Girardin, December 2021.