• Children and Sport
• Value of Sport Monitor
• CASRO Research
• Value of Sport

The Australian Sports Commission is the Australian Government body responsible for coordinating the Government’s commitment to the sporting industry.

Its role is to provide national leadership in all facets of sport development from the elite level, through national sporting organisations (national governing bodies for sport and their affiliated associations, clubs and individuals), to the government and private sectors, schools and the wider sporting community.

Research objectives

The overall aims of this research were to provide a better understanding of the factors influencing young peoples’ involvement in sport and physical activity, and through tackling issues such as obesity, verify the positive benefits of lifelong involvement in organised sport.

The study addressed five main questions:

1. How and why are young people involved in different kinds of physical activity?
2. Which types of young people are active, and how and why do they get involved in sport?
3. Are there ‘good news’ stories about the benefits of sport and how young people can successfully combine their involvement in sport with other positive life pursuits, such as success at school?
4. What strategies are necessary to encourage and sustain lifelong involvement in sport and physical activity?
5. What further research is needed to reliably monitor, evaluate and investigate the effectiveness of sport and physical activity programs designed for young people?

Research methodology

The research program used three methodological approaches to collect different types of data, which provided the insights to answer the five research questions posed. These are:

Literature reviews

A series of reviews of Australian and international literature were conducted to summarise current knowledge on the social and scientific contexts relevant to Australian children and policymakers. This included the:

• medical background (the current fitness, fatness and physical activity of children, and future trends)
• social background (the roles of families, communities and governments in physical activity)
• economic background (the costs and benefits of activity)
• psychosocial background (children’s perceptions of sport and physical activity).

Market segmentation analysis

The study applied market segmentation techniques — that is, cluster analysis — to use-of-time and demographic data collected on a large sample of 9–15-year-old (1) South Australian children, (2) with a view to differentiating children according to their physical activity and inactivity time budgets. Identification of children typical of each cluster enabled qualitative information on their lifestyles and family contexts and, consequently, better informed recommendations for future intervention strategies. Until recently, market segmentation, which identifies different types of consumers based on demographic, attitudinal and behavioural characteristics, had mainly been applied in commercial contexts, but in this study, it was used as part of a cluster-analysis process to look at the ‘activity market’, based on several thousand very detailed use-of-time profiles completed by children.

Overall, 4661 children aged 9–15 years (the mean age was 11.9 ± 0.8) were randomly selected from schools in South Australia and completed the use-of-time Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents diaries. All of these were analysed; however, for the purposes of this study, only a sub-set (1129) was used for the cluster analysis. Parents and children consented to being involved in the study via information sheets and consent forms approved by the University of South Australia’s Human Research Ethics Committee. On two to five occasions between April 2001 and September 2003, children completed the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents. The Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents is a computerised activity recall linked to a compendium of energy expenditures. It asks children to recall their previous day’s activities in blocks of as small as five minutes using a segmented-day format. Children choose from lists of more than 200 activities, grouped into seven categories. Physical activities, such as play and sport, require children to indicate whether their activity was light, medium or hard, assisted by text and video cues.

The analysis also included interviews with children representative of the different activity styles. It did this by identifying different categories of time use and seeing how children’s patterns fell into ‘clumps’. These clusters were formalised using well-established mathematical techniques (cluster analysis). Children could then be classified according to how typical they were of each activity pattern.

Use-of-time analysis

Data were collected using the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents to recall everything the child did in their last 24 hours (in a minimum of five-minute slices) to effectively analyse how they use their time. It provided information on the amount of time children spent on physical activity, daily and seasonal patterns in time devoted to physical activity, as well as socio-demographic correlates of physical activity. The use-of-time analysis also allowed the analysis of individual sports in terms of age and gender profiles and relative popularity.

Approaching the research questions from multiple points of view allowed the study to examine the questions from different aspects and to compare and collate the results. For example, the literature review revealed weak and inconsistent relationships between socio-economic status and levels of physical activity. The use-of-time analysis showed no relationship between socio-economic status and minutes devoted to sport or overall activity levels. The clustering analysis also found no relationships between socio-economic status and different activity styles. The findings appeared to indicate that the small effect of socio-economic status may be mediated by family structure.

Category/cluster identification — a description of the groups

A three-cluster solution for boys and a four-cluster solution for girls were found to be efficient and had acceptable reliability.

Boys’ cluster solutions

Three distinct clusters were found for boys. Cluster 1 consisted of 35.7 per cent of the sample and its members were named ‘sporties’ due to the large amounts of time they spent playing sport. Cluster 2 members consisted of 32.2 per cent of the sample and were named ‘screenies’ due to their high levels of screen time per day. The third cluster also consisted of 32.2 per cent of the entire sample and its members were named ‘autonomes’ due to their tendency to participate in activities they could create and participate in by themselves without the need for external organisation or stimulation.

Girls’ cluster solutions

A four-cluster solution was found for girls. Cluster 1 consisted of 26.9 per cent of the sample and its members were named ‘players’ due to their high levels of play time. Cluster 2 consisted of 26.2 per cent of the sample and was characterised by high levels of screen time. Its members were labelled ‘screenies’. Cluster 3 consisted of 25.8 per cent of the sample and consisted of girls who spent large amounts of time playing sport and were therefore named ‘sporties’. The fourth cluster (21.1 per cent of the sample) was named ‘socialisers’ due to their high levels of inactive socialising.

1 - This age group is of particular interest because a number of cross-sectional studies have identified rapid declines in physical activity and increases in sedentary behaviours in children in the peri-pubertal years (Kimm et al. 2000, Telama and Yang 2000, van Mechelen et al. 2000).

2 - It is important to note that this study draws from international literature and the reported behaviour of children in South Australia only. The findings of the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents and use-of-time analysis components of this research therefore may not necessarily be representative of all Australian children.