Running Head: ATHLETES SELF ESTEEM VS. NON-ATHLETES SELF ESTEEM Self Esteem in Athletes Compared to Non-athletesKerry CooperPsychology 223December 4, 2000AbstractThe correlation of playing competitive sports at college level and self esteem are measured. Subjects were given the Barksdale self esteem questionnaire to fill out and levels of self esteem are measured by scores out of one hundred. The subjects are then separated into categories determined by gender and whether they played sports at the college level. The results indicated that the elite athletes have a higher self esteem than non athletes. The survey also revealed that women have a slightly higher self esteem than men. These findings agree with our hypothesis that athletes will have a higher level of self esteem than non athletes will.Self Esteem in Athletes Compared to Non-AthletesSelf esteem is defined as “the esteem or good opinion of ones self; Vanity”( Patterson p.201). It is Defined by The New Websters Dictionary as “ ones evaluation of one’s worth as a person based on an assessment of the qualities that make up the self-concept” ( Shaffer G-9). Every one has known someone with fantastically high self esteem and someone with extremely low self esteem. It always seems to be the football captain or head cheer leader with high self esteem and the geeky computer nerd with the low self esteem. This research has set out to prove or disprove this theory. This paper will discuss in detail the method used to collect the information, the results, and the summary and conclusions of the research. It is our hypothesis that athlete’s will score higher on the questionnaire than non-athlete’s. Self esteem, as stated earlier, is a very popular term which seems to be studied a lot. In reviewing many journal articles on the topic it was found that, indeed their was a lot of research on self esteem but not research in the area of athletics and ...
