Inactivity and health
Australia, like many developed and developing countries is largely an inactive nation, with the majority of people not meeting the physical activity (PA) guidelines for health. A recent Commonwealth Government report notes that only 26% of children (5-12 years), 8% of adolescents (13-17 years) and 45% of adults met the PA guidelines in 2017-2018 (1){Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019 #5278}. Due to high rates of inactivity, overweight and obesity are now the leading risk factor for ill-health in Australia{Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2019 #5278}. The epidemic of physical inactivity is associated with a range of chronic diseases including coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and colon cancer, and early deaths, which puts extreme cost pressure on the health care system (2). Physical inactivity was conservatively estimated to amount to an international cost of $53 billion in 2013 (2).
There are many ways that people can be physically active including through transport, home- work- and/or leisure-time activities (3). There are three aspects specific to leisure-time PA that people can choose to do (generally for enjoyment), which are defined as the type, mode and setting (4). ‘Type’ refers to the specific activity (e.g. football, walking, swimming). Different ‘modes’ of participation include team sports (e.g. football, cricket and netball), individual sports (e.g. tennis, athletics and triathlon), organised but non-competitive PA (e.g. cycling and running groups), and non-organised or informal PA (e.g. going to the gym or going for a walk). ‘Settings’ of participation include organisational settings, such as schools, clubs or leisure centres, and neighbourhood settings such as home, street or park (4).
The role of sport for health
This paper considers participation in sport as a form of leisure-time activity that is largely organised, such as through sports-clubs, and is often competitive (4). Beyond the proven physical health benefits, there is increasing evidence that leisure-time PA, and more specifically participation in sport, can be associated with improved mental and social health above and beyond the physical other forms of PA. Two systematic reviews provide evidence that within the domain of organised sport, team-based sport can deliver improved health compared to individual based physical activities, and this is largely due to the social nature of participation (5, 6). There is also evidence of different health benefits of participation in sport across the lifespan, with children and adolescents participation in sport having improved self-esteem, more social interaction and fewer depressive symptoms (6). Furthermore, more recently, longitudinal participation in sport for children has been found to be associated with fewer internalizing problems and better prosocial behaviour than those not participating in sport (7). For adolescents, participation in sport can result in reduced psychological distress and specifically lower social anxiety symptoms and loneliness (8).
In addition to the wide-range of health benefits of participation in sport, there are many other positive youth developments through sport. These can also cross-over to other settings such as schools, with children who participate in sport displaying less inattention/hyperactivity within schools (9). The positive youth development concept posits that children and adolescents have ‘resources to be developed’ rather than ‘problems to be solved’ which can include caring (a sense of empathy and global self-regard), and connection (positive connections with peers, family, school, and community) (10). This meta-study reports that positive youth development outcomes related to participation in sport include positive self-perceptions, like feeling confident, academic benefits where participation in sport has taught children and adolescents to work harder and strive to achieve in school, learning about independence and taking personal responsibility, maintaining positive attitudes, problem solving skills, stress management and goal setting (10). Within the social domain these positive youth developments include meeting new people and developing friendships, teamwork, leadership and communication skills. Further, in the physical domain these outcomes include improved fundamental movement skills (10).
For adults, the benefits of participation in sport are mainly general wellbeing as well as reduced distress and stress (5). For older adults, the main health benefits are improved social health, as sport provides a sense of belonging and opportunity to socialise (11). Similarly, participation in community group physical activities for older adults can improve social wellbeing, especially following significant life events such as retirement, or moving house (12). Participation in sport for older adults helped to reduce their loneliness and provided an opportunity to engage with friends and community clubs were an important social element in their lives and provided a positive family-like atmosphere (11).
Sport policy
National sport policy provides a lead for the associated sports organisations to develop their own strategic plans, policies and practices which filter through to local community sports clubs. These policies and strategies have a dual focus of community-level population-based participation and at the other end of the participation spectrum, elite performance (13). At the community level, sport policies are about encouraging people to be active through sport and engage in PA throughout their lives to build and nurture healthy individuals and communities (13). Sport policy development is also about increasing the number of people active through sport and PA for health reasons (13). The current Sport Australia priorities are now to: build a more active Australia; achieving sporting excellence; safeguarding the integrity of sport; and strengthening Australia’s sport industry (13). Following these strategic priorities are specific targets that should lead to outcomes of: improved physical health; improved mental health; personal development; strengthening communities and; growing the economy (13). These are nearly identical to the policy outcomes of Sport England which are to achieve: physical wellbeing; mental wellbeing; individual development; social and community development; and economic development (14).
Sport has recently been more broadly defined in Australian policy language and as such is more in line with definitions used in Europe and specifically by Sport England. This change, from sport being traditionally competitive and club-based, now encompasses “a broad range of physical activities including informal, unstructured activity such as walking, riding, swimming and running as well as the traditional, structured sport and new and evolving sport and PA offerings such as mixed martial arts, “ninja” style obstacle courses and stand-up-paddle boarding.” (p.6) (13).
Various models that all focus on elite outcomes
To our knowledge no strategic sport participation pathway model has been developed as a guide towards increasing sport participation across the lifespan. Most sport participation models or frameworks were, and are, developed as talent development pathways. However, very few sport participants become internationally competing athletes. These models rarely consider population-level participation in sport and other leisure-time PA seriously, nor do they consider changes in participation across the lifespan.
Sport policy development has mostly been driven by moving mass participation into elite sporting success. For example, the Standard Model of Talent Development (SMTD) is based on the old, yet still utilised pyramid model of sport development. The SMTD model published in 1993 Tinning, Kirk (15) depicts a school sport and physical education hierarchy with physical education at the broad base and national titles at the top. An adapted model is presented in Figure 1 (16). The authors refer to it as a performance (talent) pathway model, therefore focusing on elite development and performance. It depicts the broad base as the foundation of skill development and fewer and fewer people are represented up the triangle as the levels of performance (and talent required) increase (16). A criticism of SMTD articulated by Bailey and Collins (16) is that it focuses solely on progressing those identified as talented ignoring the majority of (potential) sport participants (16). A further criticism about the SMTD, is that it conceptualises development and performance in sport as simple and linear, and that it presumes that successful progression from one level to the next is indicative of ability (16).
Insert Figure 1 about here
Another sport participation pathway framework is the FTEM framework (17). The FTEM represents the Foundations, Talent, Elite and Mastery, with three of its four stages focusing on talent and elite development and mastery. This framework also identifies the foundations of learning and the acquisition of basic movement. There are three foundation phases and then four talent phases, before two elite phases and one mastery phase which represents sustained elite success. The FTEM does depict that people move out of the FTEM and can then engage in an active lifestyle and/or sport.
A third model of sport participation is the Developmental Model of Sport Participation (DMSP), which again is an athlete development model (18). Specifically, the DMSP is based upon both theoretical and empirical data and discusses the development of sport ability through childhood and adolescence (not the lifespan!) and focuses heavily on participation and early diversification before specialisation. Whilst this model focuses on athlete development it does consider that throughout childhood and adolescence the less talented and/or ambitious can continue to play at a recreational level (18). Its focus, however, is on athlete development and the requirements to achieve international success (18).
Rather than criticising these player development pathway models on their incompleteness, we acknowledge that they represent talent development and elite player pathway models and are about the journey from novice to elite athlete. However, very few people playing sport as a child will become successful elite athletes. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for sport participation models to consider the actual sport participation trends across the lifespan.
Sport participation trends
There is a body of research highlighting that there are critical transitional life stages related to drop-out or retention in sport and physical activity (4, 19). Participation patterns at these transition stages often differ between sport and other leisure-time physical activities. There is consistent research that older adolescents shift their participation away from organised, competitive sport and towards non-competitive modes and settings and individual types of PA (4).
Australian community-level sport policy has been driven by an overriding objective of increasing participation numbers. As a consequence, national sporting organisations (supposedly) prioritise increasing participation. A focus of these organisations is to be Australia’s leading participation sport, and other goals relate to elite success and fan engagement. Examples include tennis, netball and cricket:
- Tennis Australia’s objectives are: more active players, more great champions, more devoted fans and healthier communities (20).
- The vision for Netball Australia is to be Australia’s leading team sport. This is underpinned by an objective to be ranked the number one participation sport in Australia, as well as growing broadcast audience, success of the elite competition as the world’s number one women’s sport league, and to be the world’s number 1 ranked netball team (21).
- The vision of Cricket Australia is to be Australia’s favourite sport, a sport for all Australians. The three pillars for achieving this are fans – number 1 for fans; participants and volunteers – number 1 for participation and; elite players and teams – number 1 in all formats (22).
It can be derived from these examples that community-level sport policy, in theory, is measured by annual sport participation numbers. With such a focus on achieving increased numbers, sports have commonly concentrated their strategies on input measures such as the number of new members signed up for the season. For example, to meet objectives a strong emphasis has been placed on expanding the market by including ever younger participants in an effort to add to total participation numbers (23, 24). At the younger ages, modified sport programs (programs that offer versions of the sport with rules and/or equipment adapted to the level of development and maturity of participants) have been created that attract a large group of new participants, especially males at the pre-school age (aged 4-5 years) (25). However, recent research shows that in a four-year period, in a study of 209,336 children, more children withdrew from modified sport programs rather than to transition to club-competition (25). Across all ages from 4-12 years, fewer than 25% of females and fewer than 14% of males transitioned from a modified sports program to a club- competition within a 4-year period. In another study, Eime et al. concluded that the optimum entry age for transition from the modified sport to club competition, for continued participation, was 7-9 years (23). From a sport management perspective, sustained participation should be a focus rather than simply increasing numbers annually in order to deliver on a broad sport policy directive.
The trends of participation throughout childhood and adolescence in particular, are confounded by sampling and specialisation phenomena (26). 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 official 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). The results showed that the effect of sampling, people playing multiple sports, was highest for ages 5-14, after which this number diminishes as specialisation increases. Furthermore, the study confirmed that after adjusting for this change in behaviour, the drop-off in community-level sport participation during adolescence is real and not simply an artefact of sampling/specialisation behaviour (26).
Australian sport policy makers acknowledge that participation in sport and the role that sport plays in the Australian society has changed, and will continue to evolve (13). There is increasing evidence of a shift from traditional organised and competitive club-based sport to less structured, non-competitive and individual forms of sport and PA (4, 28-30). A ten-year study of leisure-time PA in Australia highlights that whilst participation in leisure-time PA increased over the decade, participation in club-based sport did not (29). Market segmentation research also highlights that children and adults have different attitudes towards participation in sport and PA, and that for most, participation in club-based sport is not of interest (31, 32). In addition, further demographic breakdowns of participants in sport and non-sport PA indicates that sport is not for everyone, and that people who were female, older, married or had a disability were less likely to participate in sport (33).
In the context presented in this paper so far, we argue that (at least in Australia) community-level sport strategic priorities, and therefore practices are driven by sport policies that are mainly based on elite development pathways and in order to feed this system, focus on the number of club-based sport participants. The aim of this study therefore is to explore sport participation further and develop a neutral model that does not favour community or elite sport and that highlights the critical participation transition points between age groupings including drop-out. Internationally, sport policy consistently has a focus on increasing participation in sport and to stimulate participation for health reasons. In this study, we highlight that a focus on increasing participation without acknowledging drop-out or a focus on retention is not ideal. As such our model that we describe as the Sport Participation Pathway Model (SPPM) offers a holistic starting point to (re)focus sport policy and practice.