Research

A question of sport

It’s an established fact that girls’ physical activity levels and their participation in sport are low and that they decline as they go through their teenage years.

Many assumptions are made about the pressures on these teenagers, but just what is it that drives them away from sport or physical activity?

A team of researchers from the Institute of Youth Sport, based in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, has been looking at how and when girls decide to turn their backs on an active lifestyle and, crucially, why it happens. Debbie Hughes finds out more.

At the start of the year, the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), in conjunction with Sport England, published the findings from the latest Active People Survey. It revealed that women still lag significantly behind men when it comes to participation in sport, and around 80 percent of them don’t do enough physical activity to benefit their health.

The WSFF wanted to know why this phenomenon endures and so they commissioned a team of researchers from Loughborough to look into the issue.