Abstract:

This research examined the relation between students’ academic achievement and their membership in a sports club. 1041 male and female students from vocational secondary schools and general high schools from three counties of the Republic of Croatia participated in the research: 607 participants were from the City of Zagreb County, 150 from the Split-Dalmatia County and 284 from the Vukovar-Syrmia County. As methods of inferential statistics were applied while testing statistical significance and the distribution of all variables treated as quantitative variables deviated statistically significantly from the normal distribution, appropriate nonparametric tests were used. The research confirmed gender differences with regard to the number of registered athletes in favor of male students. It is shown that the number of students registered as sports club members decreases statistically significantly in the upper grades of secondary schools. In vocational secondary schools a statistically significant difference in terms of academic achievement was confirmed, i.e. registered athletes have poorer academic performance, whereas no statistically significant difference was confirmed with regard to academic success of registered athletes in general high schools. Students who are registered athletes differ statistically significantly in the number of applied kinesiological activities and apply a larger number of kinesiological activities in comparison to students not registered as sports club members.

Keywords:

Academic achievement, extracurricular activity, after-school activity, recreation, physical activity.