Development of the Thai folk game "Jik Sen" into a recreational sport for youth.

Abstract

Suitable exercise and sports are helpful for developing physical fitness of children and youth. This action research is aimed to design and develop Jig Sen folk play to be a recreational sport for youths at the age of 15 – 24 years. The study was implemented in 2 steps: design and development and quality assessment. 1) The design and development were conducted with 50 healthy youths at the age of 15 – 24 years and 9 qualified people in sports science and physical education for assessing feasibility and face validity of the sport model developed by the research team. And 2) The quality assessment was performed with 40 participants who were sport players and audience of Jig Sen sport competition and the data were analyzed in mean, percentage, and standard deviation. According to the study results, 1) one model of a Jig Sen recreational sport for youths at the age of 15 – 24 years was obtained with 0.91 face validity; and 2) the overall quality of the researcher-developed sport model was at the very good level with mean of 4.66 ± 0.52 points. Regarding the physical fitness development, the sport model was mostly helpful for developing physical fitness in terms of neuro-muscular coordination at the mean of 4.78 ± 0.42 points. In conclusion, the Jig Sen sport model developed by the research team needs playing equipment, field, rules, and criteria suitable for arranging youth sport competition and the model can be used as a recreational activity for promoting physical fitness of youth at the age of 15 – 24 years.