Barriers to participation

• Barriers to participation:

  • Peers
  • Family
  • Education
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Media
  • Accessibility
• social groups


  people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics and have a sense of unity and togetherness
• engagement patterns


  trends in involvement
• barriers for women:

  • sport is male dominated
  • elite female sport/performers have less media coverage
  • media coverage includes irrelevant information
  • women recieve less support from peers/family
  • women's facilities develop slower than men
• attitude:

  • poor attitude towards sport - laziness, silliness
  • silliness - if others do not take sport seriously, also may feel obliged not to
• role models:

  • lack of role models can cause good performance or underperforming
• family:

  • encourage children to participate in same sport they do or like
  • reliance on parents/guardians e.g needing parents to take you to training
  • children influence to play sport through siblings
  • if parents do not like sport, may not support child playing in that sport
• education:

  • exams/grades
  • bad experiences in physical education
  • children may be interested in playing sports their school does not offer
• differences between social groups:

  • disabled - 17%
  • ethnic minorities - 55%
  • males - 65%
  • lowest socio-economic groups - 27%
  • females - 60%