Exploring the covariates of sport participation for health: an analysis of males and females in England

Abstract

Increasing sport participation has been identified as a key vehicle for achieving World Health Organisation guidelines for health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA). A policy challenge is to promote this changed behaviour. Making use of the Active People Survey, a zero-inflated ordered probit model is used to identify the covariates of sport participation for males and females with respect to the related decisions to either participate in sport or not, and to participate at either lower or higher than desired intensity. To inform current policy emphases, the Active Places Survey is also used to examine the causal impact of facility provision on these behaviours. Results indicate that females are more likely to adopt less intensive activity even with time available. Families could place most constraints on females, but also reduce the intensity of male participation. Education has a greater association with higher intensity female activity. The largest effects are identified for sport club membership and facility satisfaction. Both of these affect male intensity of activity most. The main policy challenges facing sport in contributing to HEPA are shown to involve retaining male intensity of participation when ageing and encouraging greater female intensity of participation, with more appropriate matching of facilities.

Exploring the interrelationship between sport, health and social outcomes in the UK: implications for health policy

“…In the same data no association between health and SWB is identified for females. This might be further evidence of historic results found in Downward and Rasciute (38) suggesting a challenge in raising the intensity of female sports participation for health, but satisfaction with the provision of sport can raise the intensity of participation. In this regard model 2 for this data still reveals a positive association between SWB and health and health and sport.…”

“…The models were estimated on the whole sample for each wave and for males and females. Gender has been shown to be an important factor influencing sport and health (38). The models were also estimated on samples from each 8 wave that excluded those aged 75 years or more, as a robustness check to explore if outliers might influence the results.…”

Different Alternatives of Subjective Well‐Being: A Gender Analysis*

“…More specifically, some previous research findings suggest that in comparison with men, the social relationships of women tend to exhibit more closeness and intimacy, and that women place a higher value on support reciprocity (Antonucci and Akiyarna, ). Similarly, in terms of healthy lifestyles, Downward and Rasciute () and Szende, Janssen, and Cabasés (), respectively, show differences in the intensity of PA and in the level of self‐perceived health levels among women and men. Generally, women are more likely to adopt less intensive PA and show a worse level of self‐perceived health than men.…”

Is it Pleasure or Health from Leisure that We Benefit from Most? An Analysis of Well-Being Alternatives and Implications for Policy

“…This is, of course, implicit in the recoding of ordered measurements of sports participation into binary values in much of the literature noted earlier (for example, Becchetti et al, 2008;Becchetti et al, 2012;Humphreys et al, 2014 andDolan et al, 2014). In the case of continuous covariates this approach is advocated by Humphreys and Ruseski (2011) and Downward and Rasciute (2014). These zeros are, of course, an integral component of the elucidation of the effects of sport on well-being, In this regard the 'excess' zeros from the majority of instances in which there is no participation at higher intensities indicates the degree of uniqueness of such behaviour compared to the average as it contributes to well-being .…”