Population levels of sport participation: Implications for sport policy

Abstract

Background: Participation in sport can contribute to health-enhancing levels of leisure-time physical activity. There are recent reports that participation in sport in Australia is decreasing. However, these studies are limited to ages 15 years and over. Methods: This study integrates sports club membership data from five popular team sports and investigates sport participation across the lifespan (4-100 years) by sex and region (metropolitan/non-metropolitan). Results: Overall participant numbers per annum increased from 414,167 in 2010 to 465,403 in 2012 corresponding to a rise in the proportion of Victorian's participating in these sports from 7.5 % in 2010 to 8.3 % in 2012. The highest proportion of participants was in the 10-14 year age range, with participation rates of 36 % in 2010 and 40 % in 2012. There was a considerably lower participation rate in the 15-19 year age group compared to the 10-14 age group, in all three years studied, and the decline continued progressively with increasing age. Male and female age profiles of participation were generally similar in shape, but the female peak at age 10-14 was sharper than for the males, and conversely there were very few 4 year old female participants. Participation rates were generally higher in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan areas; the difference increased with increasing age from 4 to 34 years, then steadily declined, reaching parity at around 60 years of age. Conclusions: It is a positive sign that participation in these popular sports increased by over 50,000 participants from 2010 to 2012. Large proportions of the population aged 5-14 participate in club based sport. Participation rates decline sharply in late adolescence, particularly for females, and while this may not be a concern from a broad health perspective so long as they transition into other forms of physical activity, it is certainly a matter of concern for the sport sector. It is recommended that sport policy places a higher priority on grass-roots participation and that sporting organisations are supported to prioritise the retention issues occurring during adolescence, particularly for females so as to maximise the potential for sport to maintain its positive contribution to population wellbeing.

Childhood Sports Participation and Adolescent Sport Profile

“…50,51 Therefore, encouraging maintenance of OPA throughout adolescence may be important because sport participation at younger ages predicts later leisure time PA levels. 44,52 Consistent with most literature, 53,54 the likelihood of sport nonparticipation increased with increasing age. Also, consistent with researchers suggesting that performance sport participation is not accessible to all given its cost, 7,14,21 low household income was associated with a lower probability of performance sport participation in our study.…”

Sport policy and practice: Why a focus on retention of sport participants is required for both health and performance

“…A participant must have been playing the sport in the rst year (2015), and live in Victoria to be part of the analysis. Those aged 4-29 in 2015 were chosen for analysis, as this age range has been shown to generally have higher participation rates (26,27). Participation pro les for players in ve-year age cohorts (4-29) were produced.…”

“…Participation pro les for players in ve-year age cohorts (4-29) were produced. The separate four year old group was speci cally included due to a considerable number of community-level club-based sport participants being aged less than 5 years, aged 4, but not younger (27).…”

“…That is, that children and adolescents often sample sport, whereby they play multiple sports before specialising in fewer or even one sport only. Therefore, by using o cial participation records across sports and combining the data for analysis and reporting, some participants would be counted multiple times if they play multiple sports (27). However, a recent study of 907,150 participant records for 11 major sports used demographic data to achieve more accurate matching across sports to identify the number of individual players within the sport cohort (26).…”

“…We conducted a longitudinal analysis of sport participation records for 8 major sports from 2015-2017, whereby individual participation within sports was tracked from 2015 to subsequent years 2016 and 2017. The data for this analysis were collected and analysed as a part of the longitudinal Sport and Recreation Spatial (www.sportandrecreationspatial.com.au) program of research and have been published in detail previously (27,34). The Sport and Recreation Spatial program monitors participation in sport for the purpose of informing policy development and program planning for the sport and recreation sector.…”