Lifelong Engagement in Sport and Physical Activity

Participation and Performance across the Lifespan

Nicholas Holt, Margaret Talbot, Nicholas L. Holt, Margaret Talbot, Nicholas Holt, Nicholas L. Holt, Margaret Talbot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415857901
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136660658
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Sport and physical activity should now be understood as lifelong activity, beginning in childhood, and accessible to participants of all levels of ability. This book offers an overview of some of the core concerns underlying lifelong engagement in sport and physical activity, encompassing every age and phase of engagement. The book explores key models of engagement from around the world, as well as specific areas of research that will help the reader understand this important topic.

In adopting a lifespan approach, the book pays particular attention to sport and physical activity during childhood and adolescence as well as transitions into adulthood, the developmental periods when participation in sport and physical activity are most likely to decline. Understanding more about participation during these early years is important for sustaining participation during adulthood. The book also addresses issues relating to sport and physical activity during adulthood, across a range of different populations, while a final section examines sport and physical activity among older adults, an often overlooked, but growing segment of society in this context.

Lifelong Engagement in Sport and Physical Activity is important reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in teacher education, sport and coaching science, and for health promoters, coaches, teachers and relevant bodies and organizations in sport and education.

This book is published in partnership with ICSSPE, and is part of the Perspectives series

Part I

Sport and physical
activity during childhood
and adolescence

1 Sport participation during
childhood and adolescence

Camilla J. Knight and Nicholas L. Holt

Introduction

The last two decades have been characterised by rapid technological advances that have dramatically altered the landscape of young people's leisure time activities. Children and adolescents in contemporary society have unprecedented access to televisions, computers, games consoles, mobile phones and a world of opportunities through the Internet (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2003). Given the availability of so many activities, along with declining rates of physical activity participation, researchers and practitioners have become increasingly concerned with keeping young people physically active and socially engaged. One way to achieve this is through participation in sport. In this chapter, we explore the current trends in youth sport participation, specifically identifying the types of sporting opportunities that are available and the rates of young people engaging in sport across a number of countries. We examine motives for participating in sport and suggest means to enhance sporting experiences. Our ultimate aim is to provide a developmental overview of youth sport participation from a broadly international perspective.

In Canada, sport has been defined as a regulated form of physical activity organised as a contest between two or more participants for the purpose of determining a winner by fair and ethical means. Such contests may be in the form of a game, match, race or other type of competitive event. Sport requires neuromuscular skills and a high degree of difficulty, risk and effort (Sport Canada, 2009). Although this definition is useful, youth sport is an ‘umbrella term’ that refers to a range of activities, varying in terms of adult involvement, level and intensity of competition and reasons for participation (Brustad et al., 2008; Ryba and Kashope Wright, 2010). For instance, youth sport may refer to highly structured programmes, run by a professional coach, that focus on deliberately developing young people's physical skills, technique and tactical understanding. Youth sport may also refer to recreational sports clubs run by volunteers or organised by young people themselves, focused on providing opportunities to play, with the development of skills and tactics occurring incidentally (Coakley, 2009). In recent years, the term youth sport has become synonymous with organised, adult-structured competitive experiences (Seefeldt and Ewing, 1996). Furthermore, as youth sport has become more organised, it has also become increasingly privatised and subject to adult control (Coakley, 2009).

Sport and youth development

In 1978, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) deemed participation in sport to be an essential right of all human beings, recognising the benefits sport participation can have on individuals’ physical, social and psychological development. However, the idea of using sport participation to promote development is not something that arose in the 1970s. In the 1920s, when sporting activities started to become a common part of young people's daily lives, reasons for involvement were often centred around the concept of ‘muscular Christianity’ which involved developing well grounded, physically strong, ‘Christian’ boys who would be successful contributors to society (Woods, 2007). In this way, youth sport was seen as a breeding ground for successful military personnel and businessmen in society (Coakley, 2009). Young people often engaged in sport through mass participation, in games that had little structure, rules or regulation (Weiss et al., 2008). Nowadays, youth sport continues to be promoted within society, but for varying reasons. Some see youth sport as a breeding ground for tomorrow's sporting champions, while others (especially researchers and policy-makers) increasingly view sport as a vehicle for healthy physical and psychological development (Holt and Knight, in press).

Numerous benefits have been associated with sport participation. Sport provides young people with opportunities to socialise with peers and adults (Weiss et al., 2007). The face-to-face interactions that occur in sport are laden with emotion and provide a forum that cannot be matched by electronic forms of communication. Through sporting interactions, young people have the chance to acquire communication skills, learn to work alongside others, demonstrate empathy and develop lifelong friendships (Fraser-Thomas et al., 2005). Sport involvement can also provide young people with opportunities to experience success, demonstrate competence and become better educated in physical literacy (Ewing et al., 2002). Perhaps most importantly within our current society, sport participation may be one contributing factor in slowing the increase in the number of young people who are overweight or obese (Brustad et al., 2008).

Organisation of youth sport

The organisation of youth sport varies across countries and sport type (Brettschneider and Naul, 2004). Children who participate in sports such as football in North America are likely to access the majority of their training and games through high school teams because of the well-developed high school football structure. In contrast, track and field athletes from African nations may be involved in sport externally to school, developing their skills initially through sport clubs. This again contrasts with countries such as China, where children may be selected by the state to attend specific schools to train for certain sports (Syed, 2010). Somewhat similarly, in Sweden (and a number of other countries), children who show high potential in different sports are selected to attend sports schools, where they are provided with the highest level of training facilities and coaches alongside flexible school schedules (Radtke and Coalter, 2007).

Beyond school and club access, the most highly skilled athletes may be selected to play on regional or national representative teams, compete at events such as the Youth Olympics, or age group international competitions (Judge et al., 2009). In some sports, there are also opportunities for the most highly skilled athletes to be part of youth development programmes associated with professional sport teams. This is particularly evident in soccer, where ‘promising’ young athletes are selected for academies in the hope they will eventually join a club's professional team (English Football Association, 2003). If the sporting landscape was not complicated enough, some young people, particularly in individual sports such as tennis and gymnastics, may even begin their professional sporting careers while they are still in mid-adolescence.

Sport participation trends

Whereas physical activity trends among young people have been relatively well documented, less attention has been given to youth sport participation rates (Brettschneider and Naul, 2004). Nonetheless, based on the available data, it appears that somewhere between 50 and 70 per cent of young people participate in at least one sporting activity. For example, a recent study of Australian Young People indicated that 63 per cent of children (aged 5–14 years) participated in organised sport within the previous year (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). The 2002 health survey in the United Kingdom (UK) identified that 59 per cent of boys and 55 per cent of girls (aged 2–15 years) participated in sports on a weekly basis (Stamatakis, 2002). Canadian statistics indicated that in 2005, 51 per cent of children and adolescents regularly participated in sport (Clark, 2008) and data from the United States (US) showed that 54 per cent of all high school students participated in sport during 2006–2007 (Sabo and Veliz, 2008). Similar participation rates have been identified in Asian and African populations. A national survey in Singapore indicated that 67 per cent of 15–19-year-olds participated in sport at least once a week (Singapore Sports Council, 2001). In Japan, the rate of sport participation among 10–14-year-olds appeared to peak in 2006 at around 90 per cent (Japanese Statistics Bureau, 2006). Data from 2001 showed that 63 per cent of 13–18-year-olds South Africans participated in sport (Sport and Recreation South Africa, 2009).

Youth sport participation appears to be increasing in a number of countries (Brettschneider and Naul, 2004; Sabo and Veliz, 2008). For example, data from the UK from 1994 to 2002 indicated a steady increase in sport participation among young people during and outside school hours (Sport England, 2003). Participation rates in the US also appear to have increased by 8.6 per cent in the last nine years (National Sporting Goods Association, 2009). Increased sport participation rates have been illustrated in Australia between 2003 and 2009 – from 68.6 per cent to 69.6 per cent in boys and 64.3 per cent to 66.9 per cent in girls (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009), and in South Africa between 1998 and 2001 (Sport and Recreation South Africa, 2009). Further, there has been an increase in membership of sports clubs by Swedish and Finnish young people in the last decade (Brettschneider and Naul, 2004). Reasons for this increasing participation in sport may relate to the growing popularity of extreme or alternative sports (National Sporting Goods Association, 2009), increased provision of sporting opportunities for females (Coakley, 2009) and greater commitment to providing opportunities for sport participation among underserved young people in developing nations (Sport and Recreation South Africa, 2005).

However, although data indicates an increase in sport participation in a number of countries, in other countries participation rates appear to have decreased (Sabo and Veliz, 2008). For example, data from Canada has shown a slight decrease in sport participation rates among young people between 1992 and 2005, from 49 per cent to 45 per cent in females and 66 per cent to 56 per cent in males (Clark, 2008). Similarly, in Japan there appears to have been a decrease in sport participation between 2001 and 2006 (Japanese Statistics Bureau, 2006). In general, it appears that during the progression from childhood to adolescence, sport participation decreases (e.g., Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009; Japanese Statistics Bureau, 2006). This may be because adolescents are able to make their own decisions regarding their use of time and other organised activities, school, or spending time with peers, may replace sport participation (Olds et al., 2004).

Some caution must be used when drawing conclusions from the data reported above. One issue in measuring sport participation rates is that definitions of sport vary across countries (Olds et al., 2004), as do measures of ‘participation’. In some surveys, questions refer to participation in sport once in the last year, whereas in others, participants are asked to record sport participation in the last month or week. If respondents are asked to report if they had played sport in the previous year, one would expect relatively higher sport participation rates to be reported compared to measures of participation in the previous week or month. Further, some studies include sport that occurred during school hours, whereas others do not. Sport involvement out of school hours is likely to be more indicative of regular commitment to youth sport. Standardised measurements, definitions of youth sport and regular surveys are required to ensure researchers and policy-makers have a detailed and accurate knowledge of sport participation rates internationally. This is an important area for future research.

Inequalities in sport participation

Sport participation continues to be lower among young females compared to young males. This trend is apparent across a range of countries, including Japan, Australia, US, UK, South Africa and Canada (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009; Clark, 2008; Japanese Statistics Bureau, 2006; National Sporting Goods Association, 2009; Sport England, 2003; Sport and Recreation South Africa, 2009). There appears to be a greater likelihood that children from higher socioeconomic (SES) families have access to sport than children from lower SES families (Clark, 2008; Sport England, 2003). Children from two-parent families seem to be more involved in youth sport than children from single-parent families (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). Finally, although there have been strides towards equal access to participation in youth sport among different ethnicities, more young people from ethnic minority groups continue to have limited access to sport (Sport and Recreation South Africa, 2009).

Sport participation pathways

A number of models depicting pathways of sport participation have been presented in the literature (e.g., Bloom, 1985; Wylleman and Lavallee, 2004). One of the most popular approaches is the Developmental Model of Sport Participation (Côté, 1999; Côté and Hay, 2002; Côté et al., 2007). This model identifies three distinct stages young people may progress through during their sporting lives: sampling, specialising and investment. During the sampling stage (aged approximately 8–12 years), children try out a range of sports, with the support of their parents. Sporting involvement focuses on fun, play-based activities, with limited competition. As athletes progress (early- to mid-adolescence), they enter the specialising stage. During this stage, young people commit to one or two sports. There is an increasing focus upon developing technical and tactical skills and young people are often heavily involved in competition. Finally, athletes enter the investment stage during mid- to late adolescence. It is at this stage that athletes fully commit to one sport with the desire of becoming elite athletes. Intensive training and competition characterise the investment stage as athletes attempt to become the best they can be in their chosen sport (Côté et al., 2007).

However, not all athletes progress through these three stages in the sampling– specialising–investment progression. For example, some children and adolescents may ‘fast track’ through the sampling stage and enter the specialising and investment stages earlier than the traditional route. This pathway, termed early specialisation, appears to have become more common in recent years (Côté, 2009). It provides individuals with the opportunity to specialise in one sport at an earlier age in the hopes of becoming an elite athlete. However, early specialisation pathways have been associated with high rates ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Editors' introduction
• I Sport and physical activity during childhood and adolescence
• II Transitions in sport and physical activity participation
• III Sport and physical activity during adulthood among various populations
• IV Sport and physical activity during older adulthood
• Index