Insight Updates
Welcome to June’s edition of the Insight Updates! Summer is a busy period in the sport and physical activity industry but evaluating next steps or developing ideas for programmes remains important to ensure of continued success!
With the Staffordshire School Games County Finals due to take place at the end of this month, the focus for June is around Children and Young People. In addition, June has also seen the return of Volunteers’ Week; celebrating the role that volunteers portray and encouraging more and more people to volunteer in their communities. Therefore, we have decided to combine the two and provide insight and publication around these two agendas.
We hope you find the updates useful and enjoy the summer months!
Resources
Women in Sport – Reframing Sport for Teenage Girls: Building Strong Foundations for their Futures
Type: Research and Insight
Geography: National
Theme: Children and Young People / Women and Girls
Description: Women in Sport have developed an insightful report and summaries on the current physical activity levels of teenage girls. The full-report and infographics provides detailed analysis of the values that the girls considered important to them, understanding the significant barriers that girls of this age group face and promoting validation to the need to reframing of sport and physical activity. Please click the link in the sub-title for useful research and insight around what really matters in girl’s lives and the principles required to successfully engage teenage girls into sport and physical activity.
NCVO – Time Well Spent: A National Survey on the Volunteer Experience
Type: Research and Data
Geography: National
Theme: Volunteering
Description: Volunteering can be a vital aspect to running community initiatives. The benefits are significant for both the organiser and volunteers themselves. Therefore, NCVO have produce a research publication called ‘Time Well Spent’; a detailed analysis of the experience that volunteers have, the benefits of volunteering and the challenges that they may face. This document also holds an abundance of statistics that looks into the prevalence of volunteering in differing age groups, the well-being of volunteers and the difference that volunteers make to local communities. Sport and physical activity initiatives are no different so please click the link in the sub-title for the full report and summaries.
Sport England – Active Lives Data: Children and Young People update
Type: Data
Geography: National
Theme: Children and Young People
Description: The Active Lives: Children and Young People survey is the most comprehensive insight into how children in England are taking part in sport and physical activity both in and out of school drawing on the views of 130,000 children and young people. Children and young people were also asked questions about their motivation levels and this data was published in March 2019. The data gives anyone working with children aged 5-16 key insight to help understand children’s attitudes and behaviours around sport and physical activity. The survey covered measures of children’s activity levels, attitudes to sport and physical activity, swimming proficiency, wellbeing, self-efficacy and levels of social trust.
Tip of the month!
Is this right? Making sure that you trust the source is vital!
Accessing and analysing insight is a vital part to demonstrate a need for a sport initiative or evaluate the impact of that a programme may have had in the local community. However, there are a lot of data sets out there and, with this, brings concerns as to knowing whether the data gathered is trustworthy and true to what you are evaluating and analysing against.
Therefore, take some time to look at where each source has come from by asking yourself these three questions:
- Do I understand and trust the role of author/researcher?
- Are they regulated to collect research? (Published in academia, bound by research policies etc.)
- Is the information gathered backed up by other trusted sources?
Being able to answer these three questions effectively will give you a good foundation to collect the right data for the right programme evaluation!
For more info …
For further information, research and data sets to access, please do not hesitate to get in contact with the SASSOT team by following the link: https://togetheractive.org/support/contacts/sassot-team-2/
Please follow the link to our Insight Hub for more useful hints and tips as well providing links to both national and local data sets that can be used to support your ventures through sport and physical activity: https://togetheractive.org/support/insight-hub/
For further information, please contact:
David Richards
Communities and Insight Officer
07800 619693
drichards@staffordbc.gov.uk