Grant: Prize - IHDCYH Talks

The intricate nature of sport and physical activity behaviour, especially amongst children and adolescents, is an area that many Canadian policy makers, administrators and other sport system stakeholders are trying to better understand, whether to influence health outcomes or bolster club registration. Longitudinal research plays an important role in understanding the factors that influence these changes to inform policy and practice and provoke behavioural change. The Monitoring Activities of Teenagers to Comprehend their Habits (MATCH) study is unique in the world. It followed nearly 1,000 children for 8 years, from ages 10 to 17. Participants completed questionnaires administered 3 times per year about their level of participation in specific sports and physical activities, associated motives, and key influences including screen time, sleep, barriers to participation, and life events. Longitudinal studies such as MATCH are uniquely designed to document long-term patterns of sport and physical activity participation. Understanding the correlations between childhood participation patterns and those in adolescence, and the impact of life transitions and stressors on participation, can inform policies and programs aimed at increasing and maintaining participation in sport. These range from promotion of a multisport approach in childhood sport programming, to promoting unorganized sport and physical activity as a way for adolescents to manage stress, to program design based on skill development in fun, social environments. Government departments, education institutions, parent groups, sport and physical activity organizations, and communities can all be potential users of the findings. Since 2011, MATCH has provided a foundation for insight into the determinants of sport and physical activity behaviours. To date, its results were the subject of ten graduate student theses, 21 published or under review manuscripts, and 60 presentations at academic conferences.