O.N. Zinoviev¹
E.A. Bavykin^1
1St. Petersburg Mining University, St. Petersburg

Keywords: health, priority values, physical culture and sports.

Introduction. The problem of cultivating healthy lifestyle among students represents an important axiological aspect, consisting in the level of significance of the health value in the students’ system of values. If in the mindset of an individual this value is well-formed, the chances of its practical implementation are high.

Objective of the study was to explore the students’ values in the context of the academic sporting activity.

Methods and structure of the study. The total sample was made of 87 students of Mining University, 42 of whom were engaged in sports (student-athletes) and 43 were not (non-athletes). The research was based on A.N. Nikolaev’s methods of studying value orientations (MSVO) [4]. In addition, the students were asked to rate their actual health at the moment (on the 5-point scale). The data were processed by the methods of variation statistics, correlation analysis, and Student's t-test to determine the statistically significant differences.

Results and discussion. Health is ranked first in the personal hierarchy of values of all students (in both samples - 4.5 points). Consequently, the importance of health does not depend on such a factor as sporting activity.

Students not doing sports seriously, rate their actual health as average (3.6 points). And student-athletes rate it somewhat lower (3.2 points), which must be due to sports injuries.

The results of the correlation analysis reveal no correlation between the actual health self-rates and the health importance rates in both samples. Hence, there exists a considerable disagreement of the need and reality in the health domain, as evidenced by numerous data on the poor health of modern students [1, 2, 3, 5].

The health importance rates and the actual health self-rates were found to differ statistically significantly. This discrepancy is huge enough in both samples, since the difference reaches 99% of the significance level.

The correlation analysis defined the specifics of ranking the priority value of health among other values.

The sample of student-athletes was found to correlate the health value with other priority values in many ways (10).

These correlations testify to the fact that those students, who rate the health value high, are also oriented to such values as: interesting work, obtaining financial success, achieving high-level professional competency, personal growth, safety and security, happy private life (p≤0.01), experiencing vivid impressions, authority, social intercourse and spiritual and moral development of the personality (p≤0.05).

Among the non-sporting students, only 3 types of correlation between the health value and the rest of the priority values were detected. They positively correlate the health value only with the orientation to interesting work and happy private life (p≤0.05).

At the reliable level of significance (p≤0.05), increase of the health value for student-athletes is age-related. In the sample of non-athletes such a correlation was lacking.

We did not find the structure of priority values related to the health value to be gender-specific.

Qualified athletes differ from lower-skilled ones by ranking the health value slightly lower (4.3 and 4.7 points, respectively).

Perhaps, they consciously risk their health to reach a higher level.

But for elite athletes the health value is much more integrated into the system of priority values, which is proved by both the number of correlations (6 versus 2) and the significance level (5 correlations reach 99% of the significance level versus 1 correlation for low-skilled athletes).

The higher skilled athletes rank their health, the more significant they consider such values as: interesting work, personal growth, material success, professional competency (p≤0.01), vivid impressions and social intercourse (p≤0.05). Whilst low-skilled athletes, who rank their health high, set a high valuation only on interesting work (p≤0.01) and personal safety and security (p≤0.05).

The significance of the health value increases at each stage of sports career (4.2 points at the beginning of the career, 4.5 - at the stage of first successes, 4.6 - at the peak of career and 4.9 - at the final stage), and rightly so. In parallel, the index variation coefficients increases from 26.5% at the first stage to 7.7% at the fourth, which means that health becomes equally important for all athletes.

The level of integration of the health value into the individual system of values is low enough at the initial stage of sports career (2 correlations); it slightly increases at the second stage (5 correlations) and reaches its maximum at the peak of sports career (8 correlations), then sharply decreasing by the moment of its termination (1 correlation).

At the first stage, athletes focused on the health value rate interesting work high and serving people - low (p≤0.05). At the second stage ("first successes"), students, who rate their health high, set as high valuation on safety and security, personal growth, morals, vivid impressions (p≤0.01) and social intercourse (p≤0.05). At the third stage (peak of sports career), the health value is associated with the values ​​of fame, interesting work, personal growth, professional competency (p≤0.01), material well-being, social intercourse and vivid impressions (p≤0.05), and at the last stage (career termination) - only with the value of material wealth (р≤0.05).

A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that active athletes have the highest standards of life goals, and getting back to "ordinary people" deforms their priority value sphere.

Conclusion. The findings indicate that health is the leading value for modern students, both sporting and non-sporting. Students rate their health as average, and their rates are not determined by the level of significance of the health value.

Sporting activity contributes not only to the improvement of integration of the individual system of values, but also to the uprating of the health value in the overall structure of individual priority values. The factors that step up the health value in the individual system of values are: active sports, growing sport mastery and increasingly optimistic expectations related to individual sport careers.

The study data demonstrates the need for special initiatives to build up the health value and promote healthy living standards in the student population on the whole and non-sporting groups in particular, with due regard to those who retired or close to retirement from active sports.

References                                                                 

1. Bavykin E.A. Fitnes industriya – samoobman ili polza dlya zdorovya [Fitness industry - self-delusion or health benefits]. Zdorovye – osnova chelovecheskogo potentsiala: problemy i puti ikh resheniya, 2012, no. 1, p. 190.
2. Vilenskiy M.Y., Gorshkov A.G. Fizicheskaya kultura i zdorovy obraz zhizni studenta. Ucheb. posobie [Physical culture and healthy lifestyle of students. Study guide]. Moscow: KNORUS publ., 2012, 240 p.
3. Zinov'ev N.A. Formirovanie zdorovogo obraza zhizni studentov tekhnicheskogo vuza v protsesse fizicheskogo vospitaniya [Formation of healthy way of life of technical university students during physical education]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2014, no. 2, pp. 6–9.
4. Nikolaev A.N. Metodika izucheniya tsennostnykh orientatsiy [Methods of studying value orientations]. Mater. 27-y nauch. konf. «Psikhologicheskie osnovyi pedagogicheskoy deyatelnosti» [Proc. 27th scientific. conf. "Psychological foundations of pedagogical activity"]. St. Petersburg SAPC publ., 2000, pp. 40-43.
5. Strakhova I.B. Zdorovy obraz zhizni kak sposob integratsii v sotsium: Na primere studentov s oslablennym zdorovyem. Avtoref. dis. kand. sotsiol. nauk [Healthy lifestyle for social integration: Case study of students with weak health. PhD diss. abstract]. Novosibirsk, 2005, 18 p.

Abstract

The study was designed to rate health in the system of values of the sporting versus non-sporting students; and it found health being ranked high on the list of the young people’s values albeit it should be noted that the sampled students on the whole tended to rate their health as average. The actual health self-rates were found to show no correlation with the health importance rate that may be interpreted as indicative of a significant disagreement of the need and reality in the health domain. Objective of the study was to explore the students’ values in context of the academic sporting activity.

Sport practices may be viewed as the factor that increases the health value in the individual system of values and both consolidates this system and increases the role of health in the individual system of values. Active sports were found to step up the health value in the individual system of values in total with the growing sport mastery being associated with the increasingly optimistic expectations related to the individual sport careers. The study data demonstrates the need for special initiatives to build up the health value and promote healthy living standards in the student population on the whole and non-sporting groups in particular, with due regard to those who retired or close to retirement from active sports.