PERCEPTION OF GLOBAL SELF-ESTEEM AND BODY FAT IN ADOLESCENTS ENGAGED IN BASKETBALL

Mental and moral maturity, growth, appearance, physical skills are nowadays more and more often used as reference points of our identity and emphasized in adolescence (Harter, 1999). Development of physical self-concept’s domains (e. g. appearance, self-esteem, physical competences, etc) has been a major concern among physical activity researchers during the last decade (Fox, 2000). The study examined the relation between the separate specifi c domains of physical self-concept: global self-esteem (the overall positive or negative feeling about one’s self) and body fat considering age and gender in adolescents — basketball players. Global self-esteem is understood as the overall positive or negative feeling about one’s self; or generalized feelings of self-worth which are not specifi c to a particular situation, but which apply to many activities or areas of life and predispose the subject to view new activities in particular ways (Macek, Lacinová, 2006). And body fat — an attitude towards you body fat directly (I think my stomach is too big; I have too much fat on my body; I am overweight; etc. (Marsh et al., 1994). Our study sample consisted of 95 adolescents — basketball players (54 males and 41 females) from different sport gymnasiums and clubs in Prague and Brno (Czech Republic). The respondents were divided into two age groups (I — 13—15 years of age and the II —16—18 years of age). An ordinary Introductory Questionnaire of 20 items was compiled in order to describe the population. The questionnaire was compiled by the fi rst author of the current study. The variables were assessed by the Physical Self Description Questionnaire (PSDQ, Marsh et al., 1994). Both questionnaires were anonymous. To ensure uniformity in the administration of the questionnaire, the same set of directions were followed each time by the same researcher. To analyze the interaction effects for our researched factors (gender and age involvement), MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) and correlation were calculated. Signifi cance level was chosen to be 10%. The results proved our assumption that females tended to have more negative evaluation of the body fat then males regardless of their age. The second part focused on the measures of global self-esteem. The differences in the evaluation on global self-esteem were revealed by age, but not by gender. Global self-esteem was found to be more positive in younger adolescents —basketball players — than in older players regardless of their gender (p < 0.01).


M
any scientists (e. g.Fox, 2000;Klomsten et al., 2004;Moreno, Cervello, 2005;Oweis, Spinks, 2001) acknowledge that participation in sports activity is one of the key factors contributing to the development of identity and positive self-esteem in adolescents.Positive self-esteem is an important part of human development, and sports participation is known to contribute to it.The authors mentioned above also stress that sports activity encourages communication with peers, develops physical abilities, character, creativity, the value system and contributes to the development of work skills.According to scientifi c publications, self-esteem develops through assessment of one's abilities and the response of others to those abilities.Adolescents engaged in sports always receive instructions and the assessment of their activities from their coaches.In addition, adolescents can soon notice the improvement of their physical abilities and compare them with those of their peers in the team.A game is fi rst of all an activity.Considering team sport -in our case basketball, involvement in playing infl uences the physical, physiological and psychosocial components of a sporting individual, develops his/her behavior, character, creativity, shapes the value system, develops physical abilities and infl uences the development of work skills.Team sport is always associated with roles, with a clear dominant goal, that later on can also refl ect on the individual -a team player (Svoboda, Vaněk, 1986).
The study is focused on young basketball players of both genders.Before the study, a comprehensive literature review including Czech and foreign scientifi c sources was made.The scientifi c problem is the lack of the research that would reveal up how team sports experience infl uence the development of an individual.Moreover, not many researchers have investigated gender differences in multi dimensional physical self-concept recently.Thus, this study was conducted to reveal gender and age differences of the two chosen domains of physical self-concept -global self-esteem and body fat.Some previous studies revealed that males scored higher than females in global self-esteem (Klomsten et al., 2004).S. Laskiene et al (2007) found that the score of self-esteem in male adolescents both engaged in sports and not engaged in sports was higher than that of their female counterparts.This is related with psychosocial peculiarities typical of adolescence period.But do only male basketball players score higher than females?Do they score higher on the other dimensions of physical self-concept such as body fat or global self-esteem as well?
Our survey study allows suggesting that there is no decent research focusing on team-sport in the Czech Republic, even if physical self-concept and its domains have been a widely discussed topic in the last decade.There are some similar studies made abroad (e. g.Klomsten et al., 2004), which not only deal with physical self-concept and its domains, but also analyzes it in athletes-adults and adolescents engaged in different kinds of sports.
The aim of the study was to identify age and gender differences in global self-esteem and body fat in adolescents -basketball players. Objectives: • To determine the differences of global selfesteem according to the age and gender of adolescents-basketball players • To determine the differences of body fat according to the age and gender of adolescentsbasketball players Referring to the analyzed research literature we framed the following hypotheses: H 1: Males will produce signifi cantly higher results in global self-esteem than females regardless of their age; H 2: Body fat will score higher as negative evaluation in females than males regardless of their age.
The object of the research was global selfesteem and body fat in adolescents engaged in basketball.

RESEARCH METHODS AND ORGANIZATION
Research contingent characteristics.Our study sample consisted of 95 adolescents -basketball players (54 males and 41 females).The mean age of the players was 15.5 years.Since gender and age were the focus of this study, the adolescents were divided into two age groups.The fi rst age group included adolescents aged 13-15 years and it consisted of 23 males with the mean age of 14.3 years, and 17 females with the mean age of 14.2 years.The second age group (including 16-18 year-old players) consisted of 31 males with the mean age of 16.8 years and 24 females with the mean age of 16.6 years.The participants were students from the Sport Gymnasiums and clubs in Prague and Brno (Czech Republic).The players (including both genders), who had been training for more than four years (86%), declared the following achievements: champions in the Czech Republic, the prizemen / women in the basketball championships in the Czech Republic, representative players of extra league, the winners of school basketball matches, etc.
The limitation of the study can be a small number of respondents.We applied to 7 gymnasiums and clubs, but only very few of them gave us permission to carry out questioning.
Introductory Questionnaire.An ordinary Introductory Questionnaire of 20 items was compiled in order to be able to describe the research participants (author -V.Medišauskaitė).
Physical Self Description Questionnaire -PSDQ (Marsh et al., 1994).The Physical Self-Description Questionnaire (PSDQ) is a 70-item questionnaire that measures nine specifi c components: Appearance, Strength, Endurance, Flexibility, Health Coordination, Physical Activity, Body Fat (e. g., "I have too much fat on my body," "My stomach is too big") and Sport Competence, one Global Physical Scale and one Global Self Esteem Scale (e. g., "Overall, most things I do turn out well," "Overall, I am no good").All PSDQ scales contain six items except for the Health and Global Esteem subscale that has eight items.Each PSDQ item is an ordinary declarative statement, and the participants respond to it using a 6-point truefalse response scale.The PSDQ was designed for adolescents.
The Questionnaire was standardized in Australia, SELF-Concept Research Centre, and validated in a number of studies in Australia and other countries in the adolescent population (http://self.uws.edu.au/Conferences/2006/Abstracts.pdf).The inventory was adopted for the use in the Czech Republic.Unfortunately, we did not succeed in fi nding an adequate standardized instrument in the Czech Republic.
Statistical Methods.The statistical methods used were MANOVA and correlation.Signifi cance level was chosen to be 10%.
The Procedure.When we were granted permission from the sport school headmasters to perform the study, we carried out our questioning.Students, who agreed to participate, completed the questionnaires.They were informed that the questionnaire was not a test and that there were no right and wrong answers.The participants were told that they could stop participating in the study at any time.They were assured that their answers would be kept confi dential.The participants were not allowed to talk to each other during the study, except to ask for help from the researcher if they did not understand the questions.To ensure uniformity in the administration of the questionnaire, the same set of directions were followed each time by the same researcher.The procedure including explaining instructions took 25-30 minutes.

RESEARCH RESULTS
The results of our current study revealed statistically signifi cant difference (p < 0.01) between global self-esteem and age.Global self-esteem was evaluated more positively in younger adolescents -basketball players -than in the older ones regardless of their gender (Table 1, Fig. 1).
The signifi cant difference (p < 0.01) was found between body fat and gender.The results indicate that females evaluated their body fat very negatively compared to males, regardless of their age.Females thought they were not skinny enough,

PERCEPTION OF GLOBAL SELF-ESTEEM AND BODY FAT IN ADOLESCENTS ENGAGED IN BASKETBALL
some of them supposed they were fat, or everybody thought they were fat and unattractive (Table 2, Fig. 2).

DISCUSSION
The western society demands slenderness from men and women.It is expected from a woman to be slim and well-proportioned, and a man to be slim and muscular.Previous studies have shown that females, in particular, are critical about their appearance and body weight (Hoyt, Kogan, 2001;Rosenblum, Lewis, 1999).The study of T. A. Klomsten et al. (2004) support this conclusion -that is, the female adolescents demonstrated a low score in body fat even if they were engaged in sports as out of school activities.The author did not indicate any signifi cant differences in age.
The respondents of our study have their goal of life -sport, moreover, a team sport, which takes time, perfectly shapes their bodies.As our results showed, there were some points proving it was not exactly what we thought.Female adolescentsbasketball players reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction than male adolescents (p < 0.01), and that also confi rms some previous fi ndings in sportive or non-sportive adolescents (but not basketball players) by such researchers as A. J. O'Dea, S. Abraham (1999), M. Blatný (2001), L. Fialová (2001), M. P. McCabe, L. Ricciardelli (2004) and others.The topic of adolescents engaged and not engaged in sports is widely discussed by L. Fialová (2001Fialová ( , 2007)), too.Moreover, the author found that the youngest girls were more satisfi ed with their physical appearance than boys, but in all other age groups the boys were more satisfi ed than girls.Considering the body shape and body fat in non-sportive Czech adolescent population, the evaluation of males is always higher than of females (Fialová, 2001(Fialová, , 2007)).We suppose that the negative body fat evaluation mainly comes from the environmental pressure.Media, journals, fashion are slenderness oriented 'pictures', which promise success and power.The investigated females -young basketball players -were fi t from the perspective of the researcher, but demanding and critical about their bodies from the perspective of themselves.
The previous study of T. A. Klomsten et al. (2004)

PERCEPTION OF GLOBAL SELF-ESTEEM AND BODY FAT IN ADOLESCENTS ENGAGED IN BASKETBALL
females (students were engaged in out of school activities -different kind of sports, Norwegian population).In our study the results revealed statistically signifi cant difference (p < 0.01) between global self-esteem and age, but not gender.Selfesteem was found to be more positive in younger adolescents -basketball players -than in older players, and this conclusion does not support the previous study results of M. Blatný (2001) or K. C. Kling et al. (1999) considering gender, where studies provide evidence that males score higher on measures of global self-esteem than females, but the difference is small (non-athlete gymnasium students), or of F. Alasker and D. Olweus (1992) where self-esteem also varies according to gender in adolescents (non-athletes), and the previous study of S. Laskiene et al. (2007) where male adolescents both engaged in sports and not engaged in sports scored higher in self-esteem than their female counterparts did.It is worth noting that S. Harter and A. Monsour (1992) reported that global self-esteem is stable during adolescence and increases slightly over the period.We suppose the outcome in our investigated group of athletes (with self-esteem decreasing with age) could be related to adolescence itself, the period of transition, and that complicates our discussion and prevents us from some concrete considerations.As we know, the transition period involves not only biological, cognitive, but psychosocial development, too (Macek, 2003).Our obtained results could also explain that probably younger adolescents are not so focused on being very good players as the older ones.With age the requirements to achieve higher results are increasing, so self-esteem could have a tendency to decrease as not being or feeling "perfect" or not meeting the requirements regardless of gender.Basketball is more likely to be seen as a masculine sport what in theory could "equalize" the sport values and competences of both genders.However, it is hard to make a grounded conclusion or to offer an explanation without any further investigations.

CONCLUSIONS
1.The results revealed statistically signifi cant difference (p < 0.01) between global self-esteem and age, regardless of gender.Global self-esteem was found to be more positive in younger adolescents -basketball players -than in older players.2. A signifi cant difference (p < 0.01) was found between body fat and gender.The results indicated that females evaluated their body much more negatively compared to males, regardless of their age.Females may have thought that they were not skinny enough, some of them thought they were fat or unattractive.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The means of partial least squares (body fat in relation with gender) revealed that both age and gender were signifi cantly related to global self-esteem in adolescents.Males scored signifi cantly higher than