Physical Activity: Using Concept Mapping to Sustain Participation in Youth Sport

描述（由申请人提供）：体育活动对儿童和青少年的正常成长至关重要，但不符合国家体育活动指南的比例非常高，这在一定程度上导致了美国最超重和肥胖的一代儿童。学校赞助的体育活动并不能解决儿童和青少年缺乏运动的问题；因此，在课后时间进行体育活动对儿童和青少年的健康发展至关重要。青少年体育是一项课后家庭参与的健康促进活动，具有显著的生物心理社会效益，可以是一种有趣和愉快的方式，可以获得推荐的身体活动水平。事实上，青少年体育项目为体育活动创造了更广泛的社区支持，因为它们吸引了许多利益相关者——儿童和青少年、父母、教练和家庭——创造了一种充满活力的体育活动体验。然而，青少年体育运动的流失率高得惊人——每年有多达三分之一的儿童退出青少年体育运动，多达70%的儿童将在青春期退出。因此，需要进行研究，以确定持续参与青少年体育运动的决定因素和障碍。概念图是一种归纳混合方法，它通过制作可视化地图，同时将利益相关者面临的经验和障碍概念化，这些地图显示有关主要因素的数据，它们如何相互关联，利益相关者群体之间的相似性和差异性，因素如何随时间变化，以及干预的最重要和可行性因素。此外，概念映射自然会导致并指导评估度量标准的开发。本研究的总体目标是使用概念图来开发一个强大的概念框架，以进一步了解与最佳实践和障碍相关的潜在机制，以维持家庭和发展儿童（8-18岁）参与青少年体育。因此，为了实现我们的目标，我们的项目被系统地组织成三个阶段，每个阶段都针对我们的研究目标：(1)确定儿童、父母和教练如何概念化他们参与青少年体育的经历和障碍的因素并确定差异；(2)为上述利益相关者制定和验证参与体验和有组织体育障碍的客观多维措施；并且，反过来(3)利用这些新开发和验证的参与性体育体验和障碍的措施来预测青少年体育运动的1年损耗。这将是第一个创新地将概念映射应用于身体活动和运动参与研究的研究。这种独特的数据对于制定青年体育可持续性模式至关重要，并将有助于设计和测试适合具体发展和性别的有效青年体育可持续性干预措施。完成我们的目标将进一步提高我们促进健康和预防疾病的能力，进一步了解如何通过有组织的青少年体育运动，最好地成功地使儿童、他们的家庭和社区参与健康和积极的生活方式。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Physical activity is vital to the normal growth of children and adolescence yet an epidemic proportion do not meet national physical activity guidelines, which in part has lead to the nation's most overweight and obese generation of children. School-sponsored physical activity has not been a solution in fighting the battle of inactivity among children and adolescents; thus, physical activity acquired during after-school hours is critical to the healthy development of children and adolescents. Youth sport is an after-school family-engaging health promoting activity with significant biopsychosocial benefits that can be a fun and enjoyable means of acquiring recommended levels of physical activity. In fact, youth sport programs create a broader community support for physical activity because they engage many stakeholders - children and adolescents, parents, coaches, and families creating a dynamic physical activity experience. However, attrition from youth sport is alarmingly high - as many as 1/3 of children drop out of youth sport annually and as many as 70% will drop out by adolescence. Therefore, research is needed to identify the determinants and barriers to sustained participation in youth sport. Concept mapping is an inductive mixed-methodology which simultaneously conceptualizes the experiences and barriers facing stakeholders by producing visual maps which display data about the major factors, how they are interrelated, similarities and differences among stakeholder groups, how factors change over time, and factors of greatest importance and feasibility for intervention. Further, concept mapping naturally leads to and guides evaluation metric development. The overall goal of this proposed study is to use concept mapping to develop a robust conceptual framework to further our understanding of underlying mechanisms related to best-practices and barriers in order to sustain the family and developing child's (8-18 years old) participation in youth sport. Consequently, to achieve our goals, our project is systematically organized into three phases, each addressing our study aims: (1) to identify factors and determine differences in how children, parents, and coaches conceptualize their experiences and barriers associated with their participation in youth sport; (2) to develop and validate objective multidimensional measures of participatory experiences and barriers in organized sport for the aforementioned stakeholders; and, in turn (3) to predict 1-year attrition from youth sport using these newly developed and validated measures of participatory sport experiences and barriers. This will be the first study to innovatively apply concept mapping to physical activity and sport participation research. Such unique data will be critical to the development of a youth sport sustainability model and will be instrumental in the design and testing of specific-developmentally and gender-appropriate efficacious youth sport sustainability interventions. Completion of our aims will further our ability to advance health promotion and disease prevention by furthering our understanding of how best to successfully engage children, their families, and communities in healthy and active lifestyles through organized youth sport.