A Systematic Review of Factors Associated with Sport Participation Among Adolescent Females

Sports participation provides a direct means to attain health-enhancing physical activity, however, participation in sport declines during adolescence and over 85% of adolescent females fail to meet recommended levels of physical activity. Given the importance of overcoming barriers to sport and increasing equity in women’s sports, the purpose of this systematic review was to identify factors associated with sport participation among adolescent girls and operationalize those factors into theoretical constructs to guide future research. Six databases were systematically searched and 36 records were included for review. Factors impacting girls’ sport participation were categorized as personal, peer, family, socioeconomic, environmental, or other factors. The variables most frequently associated with sport participation were personal, including selfperceptions and desirable personal outcomes related to sport. Most research on girls’ sports participation lacks theoretical framework, so to aid future studies this review categorized important participatory factors into the constructs of the theory of planned behavior. Future research would benefit from theory-driven prospective approaches to make clear and consistent predictions about factors impacting sport participation as well as mixed method approaches aimed to provide more robust understanding of girls’ experiences with and perceptions of factors impacting their participation in sports