Although basketball was often cited as the most popular extracurricular sport activity in Taiwan, the overall participation rate in current High-school Basketball League (both Division-I and Division-II) was less than 33%. Major issues concerning the growth of this league included the practice of elitism, over-commercialization and emphasis in winning. In order to promote the concept of developing an actual grass-rooted nationwide basketball tournament, this study examined the perceptions of the selected high school administrators (principals = 30, athletic directors =34) and coaches (n = 27) toward this idea. The proposed tournament format was explained to all high-school administrators and coaches (n = 210) of Taipei during an annual educators' conference in 2005. The total number of participants who chose to respond to the survey was 91 (male = 71, female = 20) indicating a returned rate of 43%. The survey questionnaire, which was modified from Chen's (2004) study, contained four subsets of 5-point Likert scale items. The content of those four subsets elicited the participants' responses in areas, such as preference toward the sport and competition (5 items), perceived criteria for building a successful team (12 items), perceived benefits of participation (9 items), and potential impediments for continuing participation (12 items). Factor analyses were performed to further enhance the validity of each subset. The overall reliability coefficient of all subsets was .817. In general, the results indicated a moderate score in favoring a nationwide league play (M = 3.08; SD = 1.06), despite a better score in favoring basketball (M = 4.07) and sport competition (M = 3.95). Significant differences in interests toward athletic competitions and proposed tournament-play were found in different genders levels of education, and positions (p is at least less than .05). Administrators and coaches from the mid-enrollment size (1,501~2,500) schools would tend to support the proposed tournament play (p < .05). Participants with less years of working experience seemed to be more tolerant to the issues related to low finance, poor performance, and misconducts. The factor, “basic perceived benefits for sport participation,” was the sole best predictor of interest toward tournament-play. In conclusion, the current findings were compared to the results of similar previous study at the junior-high school level. Suggestions and recommendations for the Chinese Taipei High School Sports Federation to implement a nationwide league were also discussed.
Key words: basketball, junior high, competition, Taiwan, league