Young Swedish Athletes' perceived Social Support and Well-being in Football Academies

Sammanfattning: Abstract The objectives of the study were to examine: (I) if different categories of social support (family, friends and school) can predict well-being among Swedish male football academy players. Moreover, the purpose is to (II) compare if two age groups of male academy players (11-14 years) and (15-19 years) differ in perceived social support (e.g. family, friends and school) and well-being. The participants in the study were 443 male football academy players (M = 14.17) from four different elite clubs. The questionnaire that was used in this study consists of a modified extended-form health survey collected from FHI (Public Health Institute) developed to examine adolescents’ subjective well-being. The survey is based on SDQ (Goodman, 1997), PSP-scale (Hagquist, 2008) (Swedish questionnaire developed to measure psychosomatic issues among children) and Kidscreen (Ravens-Sieberer et. al., 2005). The result showed that different categories of social support (e.g. family, friends and school) could predict 20.4% of the total well-being among Swedish academy players. Additionally, it was found that younger academy players (11-14 years) experience a higher level of well- being and more social support in terms of friends and school in relation to older academy players (15-19 years). The results are discussed in relation to theoretical frameworks and previous research.