Relationship Between Sport Specialization and Quality of Life in Young Female Dancers

To compare quality of life (QoL) between specialized and non-specialized young female dancers.

A cross-sectional survey design was used. Young female dancers between the ages of 8-17 years completed the validated pediatric QoL inventory (PedsQL 4.0) and answered the following sport specialization questions: 1) Do you solely perform dance?, 2) Did you quit other sports to focus on dance?, and 3) Do you participate in dance more than 8 months per year? Dancers who responded "yes" to all 3 questions were classified as specialized, while dancers who answered "no" to any of the 3 questions were classified as non-specialized. PedsQL 4.0 subscales (physical, psychosocial, emotional, social, and school) and total scores were compared between specialized and non-specialized dancers using the Mann-Whitney U test with p<0.05 considered statistically significant. As subgroup analyses, the comparisons were repeated with dancers under 12 years (≤12 years) and over 13 years (≥13 years) old.

A total of 72 young female dancers were included in the final analysis. The mean age was 12.5 (SD 2.5) years. No QoL differences were found in any subscale or total scores when comparing specialized and non-specialized dancers. However, differences were detected in subgroup analyses. In the dancers ≤12 years, psychosocial and total scores were higher in specialized dancers (57.9%, n=22) compared to non-specialized dancers (42.1%, n=16) (psychosocial p=0.045; total p=0.035). Conversely, in the dancers ≥13 years, psychosocial, emotional, and total scores were lower for specialized dancers (88.2%, n=30) compared to non-specialized dancers (11.8%, n=4) (psychosocial p=0.024; emotional p=0.049; total p=0.024).

Our study found that QoL did not differ by sport specialization status when the entire sample was analyzed. However, in subgroup analysis, QoL was higher in specialized dancers in the ≤12 years than non-specialized dancers. Conversely, specialized dancers ≥13 years showed lower QoL than non-specialized dancers. Further studies are necessary to further investigate the difference in QoL when comparing younger to relatively older adolescent female dancers.