For this Researcher’s Corner, I (Michael Kong) interviewed Dr. Leapetswe Malete, an Associate Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at Michigan State University, to discuss sport-based life skills development among African youths. Dr. Leps is known for his research in youth psychosocial development through sport and physical activity. Recently, his research focuses on examining the relationship between life skills development and entrepreneurial mindset in youths.

Michael: I notice that you have done a lot of cross-cultural research in the past with samples from both the United States and Africa. Why is that your research interest?

Dr. Leps: I am originally from Botswana. Hence, I’m interested in the relevance and application of sport psychology theoretical and conceptual frameworks to contexts in which they have not been developed. By coming to Michigan State, I was determined to conduct research specifically on African populations that have not been widely researched, because these populations tend to be left behind in the field. It is less appreciated how much conceptual framework developed in other countries could be translated to the development of youth. It’s very important to bring them into the fold to enhance equity in youth development and awareness about other issues that may affect them. I have interest in Africa in particular as well as underserved communities in the US and other parts of the world.

Michael: I know the positive youth development framework is one of the areas that you put a lot of focus on. Could you briefly discuss the framework and why the sport context is considered a good place to foster positive youth development?

Dr. Leps: Positive youth development is an asset-based or strength-based approach to youth development. The idea is to move away from the problem-focused or deficit paradigm of youth development, where the tendency is to look at adolescence as a troubled time rather than a time where young people are discovering themselves. During that developmental stage, they are developing some level of autonomy and encountering a lot of challenges. It is the capacity to confront these challenges and move forward that matters more than what is lacking.

My interest in the PYD framework, particularly looking at life skills and sport, is due to the valuable lessons that sport participation teaches us. In sports, we learn teamwork, resilience, problem-solving, leadership, dealing with adversity and losing, and being an effective team member etc. For many of us who have played sport, we understand that all these values or virtues can be translated to life in many ways.

For me, as a person, playing sport at an early age, during high school, college, and after college, helped me a lot in organizing my life, including self-discipline and goal setting. I was able to translate lessons from sport to life in general, even growing as an academic. I learned all those skills through sport, and that’s why the PYD framework is quite compelling. I know some people might say that’s a kitchen sink approach to positive development, but it allows us to be more nuanced in our thinking about children and youth development and specially to adopt a strength-based approach to the study of youth development.

Michael: Yes, we will talk a little bit more about your recent research on the Life Skill Scale for Sport (LSSS) in this interview. Could you tell us about the original LSSS. What does it measure? And, why is it much needed in the contemporary research?

Dr. Leps: The Life Skills for Sports scale was developed by researchers in the UK (Cronin and colleagues). Their approach with LSSS was again driven by the idea of an asset-based approach to youth development, and in particular an interest in how assets from sport could be applied to life in general, or to the context of sport itself. The original scale has 43 items and 8 subscales, which include teamwork, goal setting, social skills, problem solving and decision making, emotional skills, leadership, time management, and interpersonal communication. Each subscale examines specific aspects that we consider critical to the development of a young person. The development of the scale was opportune because a lot of work has been done on life skills and sport for development programs already. However, there are few tools that measure program impact on youth development. The researchers in UK have created a great scale that allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs and explore the sport-based elements of the measure in youth development. Therefore, it is an appropriate measure for the work that has been going on in sport for development.

Michael: Other than your African origin, is there any particular reason why you chose to conduct this study in Botswana, Ghana, and Tanzania?

Dr. Leps: I’m particularly interested in looking at how these frameworks apply to an African context. To get a sense of the breadth and depth of the application of these tools, it is important to reach out to as many youth populations as possible, including the vast African populations. There is need to look at the relevance of tools in diverse African contexts. Botswana is located at Southern Africa, Ghana is in West Africa, and Tanzania is in East Africa. The youth samples gathered from these three major regions of Africa allow us to make comparisons and draw conclusions of whether the measure is relevant and generalizable in different regions of African and across sport contexts. This is an ambitious exercise, but I think it’s a step in the right direction in terms of the inclusion of African populations.

Michael: I like how you utilize this sampling method to address the region differences in Africa. In this research, you tried to validate the LSSS in the African population and explore the cultural differences in terms of the life skills constructs compared to the other parts of the world. I know from the findings, although the same eight constructs were identified in the African context, you decided to delete quite a few items. What insights did you gain from the findings?

Dr. Leps: Our team started off by running a confirmatory factor analysis to simply confirm the original factor structure of the LSSS. When the conventional fit indices showed poor fit with our data from Botswana and Ghana, we opted to be open-minded and used an approach that is less restrictive, which is why we used exploratory structural equation modelling as the next best approach to handling the data. One of the things that we discovered in the process, which led us to delete some items, were loadings of several items across different factors. Using exploratory equation modeling allowed us to come up with a re-specified factor structure of the LSSS that proved to be a valid estimate of life skills development in our youth population. We found that the items that cross-loaded were mostly on the measures of teamwork, social skills, and leadership. It seems some items could not discriminate fully and load independently on these three factors. When we did additional analysis and testing of the model with those items removed, the model improved significantly.

Michael: What do you think is the reason why? Do you think all those cross-loadings are caused by the characteristics of the African culture?

Dr. Leps: I can take an educated guess. Based on my understanding of the culture, the items, and the scale itself, it was likely that, due to the way the items are worded, the participating African youth might have difficulty making a distinction between the original intent of the items that described social skills and teamwork. This makes a lot of sense because to function well in a team setting, you need to have good social skills. Hence the significant overlaps between items that measure teamwork and social skills. Cross-loading of items social skills, teamwork, and leadership was unexpected and surprising, especially for leadership. It might be due to the perception in these African contexts that to be a leader, you need to have good social skills. Participants might interpret some items aimed at assessing leadership as describing or asking for social skills and teamwork. In a collectivist culture, leadership in sport may be seen through the lens of a group membership or group-oriented behavior, where consensus building is prioritized over the individual decisions. And that’s what I think may be happening.

Michael: That’s interesting. Did you find any other intriguing differences between the samples from the different regions of Africa?

Dr. Leps: Because of the small sample size, we didn’t get to the point of identifying differences between participating countries. However, we have used this scale in another study to look at life skills and entrepreneurship of the youth populations between different African countries. With the LSSS, the most interesting thing we found is that participants from the three countries changed in a similar fashion. That is, the sport context is associated with significant enhancement of life skills! We also discovered that engagement in sport, especially sport interventions, also help develop entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial thinking. Interestingly, we also found some countries had more entrepreneurial ideation than the others. For instance, Ghana and Tanzania had higher entrepreneurial ideation compared to Botswana. I don’t know why that is the case. It’s something that we need to investigate in the future.

Michael: After the validation of the scale, do you have any advice for the coordinator of youth development programs? How can they utilize the scale effectively, or what can they learn from this study?

Dr. Leps: I think the LSSS is a very robust measurement tool, and I will encourage anybody who is doing research or intervention work in this area to use this tool for measurement of changes in life skills and monitoring the sport-based or physical activity- based programs. Within the African context, more work needs to be done, but the 34-item modified scale in this study is also quite robust. When the Turkish and South Korean LSSS validation studies were conducted, modifications with similar number of items were also found. So, I believe the African modified scale is worth a try because it confirms findings from previous studies on the factor structure of the scale. Overall, our study confirms the 8 factors of the LSSS. It also affirms that participation in sport offers values or assets that can be translated to life, which are still applicable to sport itself. This is what we have learned from this line of work.

Michael: You have mentioned that there is more work to be done. So, what’s next for you regarding this research topic?

Dr. Leps: First, we need to extend this line of work to more youth populations, work with larger samples, do a lot more intervention work, and monitor it over time. We also need to look at various youth development outcomes. For instance, we are looking to use life skills to reinforce school outcomes, including academic achievement and sense of school belonging. We have also started some similar work here in Lansing, Michigan. In addition, the finding that life skills can be learned from physical activities reinforces what we have already learnt about the value of physical activity to youth development and why PA needs to be promoted in schools and communities. This is the direction that we are going, expanding the research, reaching out to more populations, looking at the impact of interventions, and more importantly, exploring youth development outcomes that can lead to sustainable development of youth and their communities. We are not looking at sport just for sport’s sake, but we also want to understand contexts beyond sport.

Michael: These research directions are very meaningful, and I am looking forward to your research work in the future!