Sports participation during the life course

For many European nations, lifelong sports participation is an intrinsic aspect of sport policy. Nonetheless, very few differentiated studies have examined how participation in sport changes over the lifespan. Differences in individual life courses and in socio-historical framing conditions would suggest a great variety of different courses. It is necessary then to ask how participation can be described over the life course, and to what extent people’s previous experience of sport influences the decision to enter, return to or exit participation in sport. In a retrospective longitudinal study based on a life-course approach to research, a total of 1,739 over 50 year olds were asked about their participation in sport. Results indicate that individual courses of sports participation can be described by alternations between active sport episodes and episodes of inactivity. The longer a person remains in a specific episode, the lower the probability of either taking up or giving up a sport. Nonetheless, cohort effects indicate that effects of contemporary historical changes on sports participation overlay the effects of lifetime dependencies, and that in general, sport policy programmes have a relatively strong impact on sport careers in middle adulthood.