A systematic review of the factors which are most influential in children's decisions to drop out of organised sport

Sport participation is popular among millions of children in countries throughout the world. The well-documented health benefits of children‘s sport participation are important to help reduce childhood obesity and the burdens of other associated childhood diseases. Despite efforts to promote sport participation, unfortunately involvement for some children can be short-lived with sport dropout (or attrition) rates being relatively high, particularly during adolescence. Although research investigating the area of child sport dropout began more than 30-years ago, there is still much to learn about the issue, and correspondingly it has been identified as a major concern by both sport practitioners and researchers. Whilst previous studies have uncovered some factors that distinguish children who do and do not drop out of sport, a detailed examination of the published literature is required to characterise these issues further and to identify where knowledge gaps exist more fully. This Chapter reports the results of a systematic review of existing peer-reviewed literature related to reasons why children decide to drop out of sport. The Chapter identifies and critically reviews relevant studies and provides a summary of their findings to contribute to a clearer understanding of the factors influencing child sport dropout. In doing so, it identifies potential opportunities for preventing child sport dropout and for promoting long-term sport participation by all children. Using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria associated with the defined systematic literature search strategies, few relevant studies were identified which addressed the issue of child sport dropout. Nonetheless, this review has identified prominent factors that contribute to child sport dropout, such as conflict of interests and time availability, the re-orienting of interests and the pursuit of participation in other activities. An important finding of the review is the identification of a clear gap in knowledge surrounding the impact of sport injury as a contributing factor to child sport dropout. In fact, sport injury appears to be largely overlooked and/or removed from studies that seek to determine the factors that contribute to dropout in children‘s organised sport. In light of international public health concerns about sport injury, and global strategies to increase participation in sport and other physical activities, it seems pertinent to obtain a better understanding of the true impact that sport injury has on the long-term retention of children in sport