Heterogeneity manifestation and formation mechanism of school youth sports activity quality: a multi-case comparative study based on the configurational perspective

Introduction Improving school-based youth sports activities is an important objective of health and education policy, yet schools continue to differ markedly in implementation quality. Methods This study combined multi-case comparison with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine how policy, resources, organization, curriculum, teachers, facilities, evaluation, and student experience jointly shape activity quality. Five schools representing resource-driven, organizationally innovative, and resource-constrained contexts were analyzed. Results Organizational leadership displayed quasi-necessary characteristics but was not sufficient alone. Eight high-quality and eight low-quality configurations were identified. High-quality outcomes reflected either the effective transformation of resource advantages or organizational compensation under moderate resources, whereas low-quality outcomes arose from weak foundational support or failures in organizational transformation. Student experience played a process-related role in several configurations. Sensitivity tests showed that the main explanatory structure remained broadly stable across the tested settings. Discussion School youth sports activity quality is shaped by combinations of conditions rather than by a single factor. Given the five-school case base, the identified pathways should be interpreted as exploratory mechanisms within the examined schools rather than as estimates of their prevalence in a wider population.