Enabling and empowering athletes with disabilities through increasing social athletic identity.

Abstract

There is still strong social stigma associated with athletes with disabilities (AWD) in Singapore (Cratty, 1980; Page & Peterson, 1998). Hence, the theoretical concept of athletic identity (Brewer, Van Raalte, & Linder, 1993) is important as sports play a role in reducing stigma and improving the psychological well-being of AWD (DePauw & Gavron, 2005; Taub, Blinde & Greer, 1999). This study is the first to apply the concept of AI to social campaigns involving AWD in Singapore. The research study proposes a new theoretical framework in which athletic identity (AI) is composed of two parts, namely social athletic identity (SAI) and personal athletic identity (PAI), which are absent from the original athletic identity concept.