PERCEIVED PSYCHO-SOCIAL FACTORS AS DETERMINANTS OF SPORTS PARTICIPATION AMONGST UNDERGRADUATES OF NURSING SCIENCE, LEAD CITY UNIVERSITY IBADAN

ABSTRACT Sport participation enables individuals to express themselves, interact with others and become active members of the community. It helps to teach values that are important to daily life, respect for each other, embraces teamwork, accountability and responsibility. However, evidence showed that young adults including students of higher institutions do not have regular habits of practicing sports. Also, there is a dearth of study on determinants of sports participation among undergraduates. This study therefore, investigated the perceived psycho-social factors as determinants of sports participation among undergraduates of Nursing Science, Lead City University (LCU), Ibadan, Oyo State. The descriptive survey research design was adapted in this study. The purposive, proportionate stratified and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 126 respondents; while questionnaire was used for data collection. The descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentages and inferential statistics of Pearson product moment correlation and regression were used for the analysis. Self-confidence (r=0.528), perceived value (r=0.208), peer group (r=0.631) and gender (r=0.552) had positive relationship with sports participation among undergraduates of Nursing Science of LCU, Ibadan. There was no significant joint determinant of psychological factors (self-confidence and perceived value) on sports participation among undergraduates of Nursing Science, LCU, Ibadan (F(2,123)= 25.469, p