The Relationship between Perceived Parenting Styles and Youth Athletes’ Sporting Achievement in Singapore

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The current study examines whether there are associations between parenting type (based on the Baumrind typology) and athletic success among youth athletes. This is an interesting topic and the article has many positive points, including being well written and exploring an understudied topic. This said, there are several areas where the manuscript could be improved. These are listed below.

11. In the introduction, more space should be spent “culturally situating” the research. Currently, the reader is introduced to this concept in the discussion section, which I think under emphasizes an important aspect of the research.

22.   In the introduction, in the subsection introducing the potential associations between parenting and sports, line 1 should be reworded.  Parenting styles themselves haven’t “suffered,” rather, little research has been conducted on the topic.

33.   In terms of describing participant recruitment, more details are needed in terms of the location of recruitment, were there any missing data, and did any surveys need to be discarded due to methodology concerns.

44.  One of the types of sports is listed as “athletics” – what is that? I am not familiar with this sport? It sounds like a general term for people who work out?

55. The authors note that they kept hard copies of surveys, even though data collection occurred online. Could the authors please explain further? Did they print out hard copies of electronic data?

66. The variable of “sport achievement” seems rather narrow. What if students play sports for their high school or for their colleges/universities? What if they are on a private regional team or a club team or even a “town travel” team? Perhaps things are different in different areas of the area of the world such as where the data were collected (somewhere in Asia? not fully described in the methods – see comment #3), but in the US for example the categories of achievement measured in the current study drastically underrepresent possibilities for athletic success for youth. Perhaps the authors can discuss this issue in the introduction, and educate readers in terms of the system used in the region where the data are collected.

77. The authors should report reliability for each sub-scale of the parenting style measure.

88. Have the authors considered using a logistic regression to see if scores on the parenting measure predict sport achievement? Maybe a separate regression for each type of achievement? Perhaps that would help provide insight as to whether they predict any variability in their outcome measure. This seems to be more of a direct test of their research question.

There are some minor challenges here - I give an example above (they say that a variable "suffered") - I suggest a careful edit.  This said, the paper overall was still very well written and understandable!  

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The results must be presented much more clearly, especially the graphs

A very small sample for this type of research.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very interesting paper and a good illustration of why studies that don’t support hypotheses or ‘hunches’ make an important contribution to the relevant body of knowledge.

The ‘set-up’ for the study is argued clearly based on the review of literature that is relevant and identifies a clear rationale for the study. The one aspect that would benefit from a little elaboration is the transferability of positive behavioural characteristics from the academic domain to sport (148-149). The point is asserted but not argued as carefully as it might have been.

The research design is described clearly and with sufficient detail to enable a replication study to be conducted. The only absent detail is when the data collection period occurred. The results are also presented clearly and provide a platform for the discussion that follows very effectively.

The discussion begins with the explicit statement that there were no significant relationships to emerge from the analysis. There are some comments for areas of particular attention which capture possibilities for enhancement.

Keywords  suspect ‘culture’ is not going to help with finding this article – too vague

170-171              The importance of parental role models and parental influence is interesting in this context. Is there any value added by referring to the body of anecdotal evidence from auto/biographical sources, e.g., Tennis – Andy Murray, Williams sisters; Motor racing – Damon Hill; Cricket – Stuart Broad, Chris Cairns, Chris Cowdrey, Alec Stewart; Soccer – Erling Haaland, Frank Lampard, Jordi Cruyff; Rugby Union – Owen Farrell, Adam Hastings, Greg Laidlaw; Boxing – Laila Ali, Chris Eubank jnr, Marvis Frazier?

183-194              I think it would be clearer and perhaps more precise if there was a single overarching aim (as expressed in 187-190) and two hypotheses that are investigated through the empirical element of the study (i.e. 190-192 and 192-194).

209-215              Is it possible to indicate in which sports the gender distribution applies? If all males are from, say, three of the sports, that would be important contextualising information to understand the participants. A table of participants by gender would capture this succinctly without adding to the word count.

241        There is no Appendix A as indicated in section 2.4.1 of the manuscript for review (this might be the place where the details on gender are already located).

405-441              The point about the cultural context/environment is important – hence the keyword point above, but perhaps the specific context (south east Asian) would be more helpful. There is also a risk in the use of the term ‘Asian’ of homogenising very different cultures across the entire continent and becoming guilt of false universalism. This is merely a matter of clarifying the specific context to which the research refers but is important nonetheless.

444        Similarly, the introduction of the term ‘Caucasian’ is potentially misleading. For clarity to an international audience, precision would be helpful.

475-476              Should this read ‘it might be overly simplistic to attribute sporting achievement to the parenting styles for youth athletes’ rather than ‘it might be overly simplistic to attribute parenting styles to the sporting achievement of youth athletes’? In either case, this might be the strongest finding to emerge from the study and might be put first in section 4.

504-508              The sample size is a limitation but the nature of the participants makes it am important contribution to knowledge nonetheless. I think the caveat about a larger sample size leading to statistically significant findings is unnecessary; a larger sample size might just as easily have confirmed no significant relationship between the variables.

556-565              The conclusion might include a comment on what the study adds to the body of knowledge would be useful to include – especially in terms of originality, significance and rigour.

Presentational matters

41-43    This sentence is a bit clunky

97-99    This looks unusual in the context of the referencing within the rest of the paper. Why introduce examples in this way here? 

144        … parenting styles and their influence on …

151        It’s not quite right to say ‘a couple of researchers’ – there are 8 in the two references cited in this paragraph alone [13 & 39] – and others in the paragraph that follows. More precision would be good here.

497        Oftentimes

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors were very responsive to reviewer suggestions for the revision.  I appreciate the attention to detail, and even the re-analysis that confirmed the currently reported findings.  The paper remains well written, and on an interesting topic.  I encourage the author to continue to pursue this line of research, and to address some of the points for expansion that they mention in the discussion section. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Corrections are fine