De invloed van sociodemografische kenmerken op drop-out van jongeren uit georganiseerde sportactiviteiten

Abstract

Participation in organised sport activities is believed to bring substantial developmental benefits for young people. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in young people’s participation in organised sports, especially concerning socially vulnerable youth. While researchers have thoroughly documented sociodemographic characteristics of ‘non-participants’ and young people’s reasons for dropping out, few studies have focused on relations between youth dropout and socio-demographic factors. In this article, we present findings from a multilevel logistic regression based on data from a school survey conducted by the Youth Research Platform, the Flemish Policy Research Centre Youth, in secondary schools in Antwerp and Ghent. The sample comprises 3.867 young people from the first, second and third grade of secondary education and from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds. All respondents reported on their previous and current sport participation. Our findings reveal that – with the exception of the experience of material wealth – all the variables used in our study had a significant influence on sport dropout. These results indicate that policy that is aimed at stimulating sports participation should not only focus on thresholds to participation but also to exclusion mechanisms within sport clubs.