Young Peoples Attitudes and Behaviours – 5 Groups

Group 1

  • Young people who are positive about sport and consistently active.
  • More boys than girls in this area.
  • Includes the people who are part of our usual ‘sporty’ audience.
  • Remain consistently active and enjoy it. For them, doing sport is normal and their friends and family also tend to take part.

Group 2

  • Young people who are positive about sport and activity, enjoy participating when they do take part, and retain positive reflections of the experience.
  • However, they increasingly find it doesn’t fit in their lives.
  • They are unable or unwilling to prioritise sport on a regular basis and sport falls from the front of mind in their day to day life. EG it isn’t relevant to peer group, external pressures, work load, even not making first team. This group can find it hard to motivate and organise activities for themselves (and others).

Group 3

  • Sits across the functional and uninterested.
  • Includes those already uninterested young people who are still taking part –mainly people at the younger end of our youth market, who are compelled to take part through compulsory PE.
  • Includes those in the functional area - young people who view sport and physical activity primarily in relation to the benefits it offers.
  • They recognise sport and activity can deliver benefits, such as help them look and feel good or feel healthy.
  • Others take part for skills development, adding value to their CV.
  • Others mentioned using sport or exercise as a means to clear the head and return to study or work more focussed. These benefits are enough to keep them trying to be active.
  • Motivations are less likely therefore to relate to the activity itself and they may gain little enjoyment from taking part. Many in this group are less likely to believe that sport can be fun. Important to reinforce the benefits
  • There are more women in this area, but a number of young men also find the wider benefits are more of a motivator for taking part than enjoyment or fun.
  • We find more young people aged 18 and over in this area – for many young people as they grow up, motivations shift from fun to looking and feeling good; ‘being fit’ is more appealing than being ‘sporty’.
  • However, because they may not enjoy what they’re doing, they can be quite vulnerable to participating for only short bursts, particularly when it relates to an immediate goal.

Group 4

  • They don’t have that immediate goal on the horizon to motivate them.

Group 5

  • Not interested in sport, and don’t do it.
  • More likely to be girls than boys.
  • They have reached the age where they can choose not to take part.
  • Many have had a negative experience of sport in the past.
  • They see sport as something that has been forced on them previously.
  • Sport is an emotive word and topic and this group are more likely to have stronger negative associations with it - which will skew their response to any language, imagery, people and communications they think are about sport.
  • Whilst an activity may be sport, the message doesn’t need to be and this is likely to be necessary for this group.
  • Tend to have a narrower definition of “sport” focussed on traditional and competitive sports - rather than the broader range of active leisure their more positive peers are aware of.
  • New sports or activities can provide more of the level playing field that many young people are looking for.
  • Their friends and family probably don’t do sport, it’s often just not on their radar at all, their interests lie elsewhere.

Design Principles

1. Young People are seeking experiences which are;

2. Messengers are influential on Young people when they are;

3. Fitting into whats important for Young people

  • One of the key phrases that the research unearthed was ‘meaningful experiences’.
  • The words and themes sitting underneath this were;
  • interactive, or social - allowing them to connect with like minded people or reinforce their place in their social group
  • rewarding – giving them something back or benefitting them as an individual
  • personalised or inspiring – something they can tailor or shape
  • something different which helps them stand out or be more creative and entrepreneurial.
  • Peers and family are important.
  • Sporting role models may work for those engaged by sport. However, sporting role models, particularly the more elite, often have a different and non-sporting impact.
  • Motivations may change - they attend a session because they want to get a bit fitter and they’re looking for an activity that gives them a good workout, after a few weeks, they’ve made new friends and they are feeling reasonably fit but keep coming because they want to spend time with their friends. The social motivation has overtaken the health and fitness motivation – if you keep talking to them about fitness, that no longer resonates as well with them. They want to develop their friendships instead and the risk is they may find an alternative way to do that.
  • It is also important to consider consistency of experience. If the first session is an all singing and dancing event, the rest can be a let down if it doesn’t fit with expectations. How consistent is the experience throughout? For example, universities followed up glow in the dark badminton with a glow in the dark roller disco rather than normal badminton. It was the glow in the dark event style elements that had appeal to the students they were trying to attract, not the badminton itself.
  • This consistency can also apply to exit routes.