The Overall Perceived Availability and Quality of Social Support among the Youth Membership of Four Galway City Juvenile Sports’ Clubs

Abstract

By participating in sports, many young people in Ireland gain great benefits. Although many of the obvious benefits can involve physical health and fitness, there are other social advantages for these youth too. In Ireland, the most popular sports are its native Gaelic games which are followed by both young men and young women. Often, young Irish people are involved in these games and as a result spend a lot of time socialising through this involvement. This paper established the overall perceived availability and quality of social support among the youth membership of four Galway City juvenile sports’ clubs. It discovered that in general the research participants are happy to be involved in their respective clubs and that they gain benefits from them too. The results show that many of the 130 young people in the study perceived they have good social relationships with acceptance, happiness, trust, and respect being considered to be valuable traits for them. Another outcome of this paper has shown that many of the research respondents feel they have strong family networks. All of these results are discussed within this paper that illustrates the strength of the perceived social support by young participants of these sports’ clubs in the west of Ireland.