Sports participation among females from adolescence to adulthood: A longitudinal study. International Review for the Sociology of Sport

Abstract It is widely believed that active participation in sports during youth is an important pre-requisite for adult involvement in sports. However, data from reliable longitudinal studies tracking patterns of sports participation from youth into adulthood are scarce. This study addresses the leisure-time sports participation of adult women, 32–41 years of age, from a lifetime sports socialization per-spective. Some 20 years after they participated in 1979 in the Leuven Growth Study on Flemish Girls, 257 female adults participated again in a comprehensive questionnaire and face-to-face interview. Inter-age correlations for sports participation are calculated from adolescence into adulthood. Logistic regression modeling and structural equation modeling are used to explain individual differences in adult sports participation. Outcomes indicate that tracking of sports involvement between late adoles-cence and adulthood is moderately high (r =.41; beta.42). The results from the multivariate analysis show that sport participation during adolescence is a better predictor of adults ’ involvement in sports than educational level or parental socioeconomic status. The variances accounted for are rather small, indicating that sport experiences and social background characteristics only partially explain the sport participation behavior of adults. In the sports socialization process, late adolescent sports experience, along with the school program in which an adolescent is involved, appear to play a crucial role in sport involvement in later life. We recommend that youth sports programs need to be examined critically with regard to their contribution to lifetime sports participation. Key words • longitudinal • socialization • sports participation • trackin