Review of the research evidence on young people and sport
What does it tell us about their underlying attitudes and interest in sport and the ingredients for successful programme design?
Nick Rowe, Sport England Research, March 2012
Contents / PagesSummary including observations on programme design does and don’ts and research priorities
The context: some recent trends in young people’s interests and use of media / 2
5
The types of sports that appeal to young people: interest in lifestyle sports / 6
The barriers that stop young people from taking part in sport or lead to drop out / 7
The factors that motivate young people to participate / 11
Life transitions - impacts on sports participation behaviours and levels of drop out / 14
Sport as a lifetime habit – early experience and sustained involvement in sport / 14
Driving up participation – what works…. / 16
Where do we go from here – ‘sporting capital’ a new theoretical model of sport participation determinants / 19
Review of the research evidence on young people and sport
What does it tell us about their underlying attitudes and interest in sport and the ingredients for successful programme design?
Nick Rowe, Strategic Lead Research and Evaluation, March 2012
Introduction
This review focuses on the evidence we have about young people’s underlying attitudes and interest in sport drawing primarily but not exclusively from research commissioned by Sport England carried out over the last 10 years. The review is selective and not ‘systematic’ but it is likely that a wider trawl of research would in many cases replicate the general findings in this review rather than add new additional dimensions of insight.
The focus is on more qualitative aspects of participation rather than on the prevalence rates of participation. The review does, however, include reference to recent survey research carried out by Childwise to contextualise sports participation behaviours within broader leisure and lifestyle trends. It also makes reference to a report on young people’s interest in ‘lifestyle sports’ as this is an interesting additional dimension of participation that can often be overlooked – and in itself says something about what motivates many young people outside of the more traditional sporting offer.
The review includes reference to what we have learned from evaluation of ‘what works’ to get young people engaged and sustain that interest.
The final section summarises the key findings and puts forward a theoretical model that emerges from the qualitative research that provides the basis for a future research agenda.
Summary including observations on programme design do’s and don’ts and research priorities
General themes
There are some general themes that can be summarised from the research. They are outlined below not necessarily in any priority order.
· Sport is only one of many leisure and lifestyle choices available to young people in the early part of the 21st century. Evidence shows the competing demands on young people’s time and the pervasive influence of new technology. ‘Sport’ is finding it difficult to maintain let alone build its ‘market share’ of the total leisure time budget available to the young. To maintain its place as a dominant behavioural choice amongst young people sport will need to continue to adapt its offer and its image in ways that appeal to this increasingly discerning customer base. Perhaps most importantly it will need to find ways to take advantage of and work effectively with an increasingly connected ‘social media world’ where the traditional boundaries between passive interest, doing, playing, watching and engaging are increasingly blurred.
· For many young people sports participation is wrapped up in broader statements about their lifestyle and identity. Research shows an emerging trend toward more ‘lifestyle’ related sports which reflect individualisation and demand for opportunities outside of the traditional sport offer. The challenge for providers is to tune into this demand while still keeping the essential essence of ‘freedom’, self- expression and self-determination that characterises these types of activities. Once institutionalised these kinds of sports can lose their original appeal – so although they can benefit from a strengthened organisational structure a light touch is required.
· Psychological factors around self identity, self confidence, self efficacy, body image and perceived competence are fundamental to whether a young person takes part in sport, and perhaps more importantly whether they sustain that participation into adulthood. The evidence that these factors relate differently to young men and women with an early socialisation process that leads to gender stereotyping is repeatedly shown in a number of studies. Many who lack self confidence find sporting venues intimidating. This is a challenge for providers most of whom, being very sporty themselves, have little sense of what it feels like to enter a setting lacking self-confidence, unsure of how to behave, what to say, what to do and constantly worrying about what other people think of you and of ‘showing yourself up’.
· Extrinsic factors – such as access to facilities and cost - do play a part in the decision to participate but they are secondary to the underlying socio-psychological factors. It is likely that these external factors will affect the frequency of participation and can be catalysts for drop out but a reduction in these barriers will of itself not be sufficient as a stimulus for participation for those with negative psychological profiles in their relationship to sport.
· The evidence shows that an individual’s relationship to sport is determined at a young age – by the time young people leave secondary school for many their future prospects for taking part in sport as an adult have been shaped. At the end of compulsory schooling many more girls than boys have a negative attitude to sport although general awareness of the benefits of an active lifestyle are high for both genders. Girls are less likely to enjoy and respond to competitive sport than boys and generally respond better to intrinsic (self improvement) rather than extrinsic (comparative performance with others) motivation.
· Those young women who are more positively disposed towards sport find particular challenges to maintaining participation through their teenage years because of a lack of players, poor teaching or coaching opportunities, lack of support from schools and challenges related to moving from junior to senior leagues.
· Life transitions are important in influencing participation – for young people this relates particularly to moving from primary to secondary school and from compulsory schooling to further or higher education or to work. Some face particular challenges from becoming young parents and these are particularly increased for young single parent mothers. Life transitions are often a catalyst to drop out – and for many this can lead to extended periods of inactivity and for a significant minority a lifetime of sedentary behaviours.
· The impact of influential others plays an important part in the socialisation of young people into and out of sport. Parents play an important role – and, particularly for girls, having a sporty mother impacts on their likelihood of participating. In the teenage years peer group influence becomes more important than parental influence. The more sporty girls tend to mix with others who play sport – but there are increasing pressures from the non-sporty majority to become inactive and develop other interests. With the influence of peer pressure many of the more ‘sporty’ girls gravitate towards the social networks of the non-sporty majority. This peer pressure does not apply to young males where sport is seen as a socially desirable activity that boosts status and peer approval (across both genders).
· More variation in the types of sports offered has been shown to be a positive factor for engaging young people and increases the probability of participating later in adulthood. Diversity and choice in the sporting offer for the young can only be a good thing.
· There is no single silver bullet to what works best to engage and sustain young people in sport. Interventions need to be targeted; context specific and sensitive to the socio-psychological relationship young people have to sport. Offering the right sports, the right mix of opportunities at the right cost and in the places young people can get to, are comfortable and confident with is important. Involving families can work for pre-school and primary ages– although for teenagers the offer needs to be more socially sensitive and friendship based. Leaders and good coaches are important – and they need to be able to show empathy and understanding as well as good technical skills.
· There is overwhelming evidence that young women’s relationship to sport is very different to that of young men and that the socio-cultural context and pressures many young women face conspire towards high levels of drop out that is gender related. Again there is no easy ‘solution’ when the causes are pervasive and societal rather than specific to sport. But the evidence does show that there are ways in which sporting opportunities can be made available to young women that will maximise the chance that they will take part and equally there are ways that will very quickly turnoff a large majority. So for example many young women will respond positively to single gender sessions, to approaches that focus on improvement rather than competition and winning, to environments that stress sociability and friendship networks, to high quality facility design including appropriately designed changing rooms and to environments in which they have no concern for their safety.
· Finally, there is evidence that there are factors that operate at the strategic and organisational level that can make a difference. For providers of opportunities to be successful they need to work in effective partnerships, operate flexibly but with clear strategic intent, understand their market, and perhaps most importantly consult and involve young people in the design and delivery of services so that they can shape them rather than having things done to them.
The context: some recent trends in young people’s interests and use of media
Young people’s sporting behaviours take place and are shaped by the broader socio-cultural context in which they live. Research carried out by ChildWise[1] shows the incredible pace and influence of new technology and social media on young people’s leisure and lifestyle choices. More than six in ten 5-16s now own their own PC or laptop; three in ten have a desktop PC, and more than four in ten have a laptop, and already around one in ten claim to have their own iPad. More than half of all 7-16 year olds can access the Internet in their own room, up from just a fifth in 2005. 7-16 year olds using the Internet do so on average for around two hours a day, and access it on more than five days a week.
Facebook and YouTube remain the top favourite websites across boys and girls, younger and older children. Two in five 5-16s are now able to access multi-channel TV in their own room and watch TV for an average of 2.7 hours a day. However the trend is towards a blurring of the edges of different technologies as they become integrated and overlap.
For children, the boundaries between different media are porous. Their favourites span the internet, television and press, plus they will download the app or play the console game. As a result of these trends it is likely that children and young people are becoming more sophisticated in their demands and expectations – and can find all the entertainment they need in their home. These developments pose challenges to physical activity generally and particularly for more traditional forms of sport. The statistics published by ChildWise[2] in 2011 on participation in sport by young people lead them to conclude that “levels of involvement in sport at school are … falling, painting a worrying picture for children’s future fitness, and for the nation’s future sporting champions.”
The types of sports that appeal to young people: interest in lifestyle sports
There has been a proliferation of new sporting forms over the last three decades that have challenged traditional ways of conceptualising and practicing sport[3]. These new forms, variously labelled ‘action’, ‘new’, ‘wizz’, ‘extreme’ and ‘lifestyle’ sports, have commercial and competitive dimensions, but are essentially understood by participants as bodily experiences – about ‘doing it.’
In contrast to the regulation of conventional sports, alternative or lifestyle sports are characterised by a relative lack of regulation and a customary refusal by participants to follow regulatory codes.
In the twenty-first century there are claims that lifestyle sports are attracting an ever-increasing number of participants, representing a wide range of experiences and levels of involvement. Yet participation figures are hard to establish, precisely because of the informal and counter-cultural context of the sports. Claims about the popularity of lifestyle sports are thus supported by equipment sales figures which suggest, certainly for the USA, that lifestyle sports purchases are outpacing the growth of a number of ‘big league’ traditional sports including baseball.
Mintel and Key Note statistics indicate that around 10% of the adult population is interested in participating in lifestyle sports, but that the majority of this 10% is drawn from a narrow age and socio-demographic grouping (15-24 year olds, mainly men, from the higher socio-economic classifications)
The barriers that stop young people from taking part in sport or lead to drop out
The University of Oxford Study[4] concluded from their review that the following factors are important barriers:
· challenges to identity such as having to show others an unfit body;
· participation was also hampered by difficulty in accessing, and the poor state of, facilities;
· a number of studies reported participant concerns with the cost of joining sporting clubs and fitness gyms.
The MORI survey of young people and sport commissioned by Sport England in 2002[5] found the following:
· Seven in ten pupils describe themselves as ‘sporty’. However this figure varied significantly by gender and year group. Seventy-eight per cent of boys said they were sporty compared with just 61% of girls. Likewise, whereas 73% of primary school pupils described themselves as sporty, this fell to 65% among those in secondary years.