30 research outputs found
Children's active play: self-reported motivators, barriers and facilitators
Physical activity has important benefits for children's physical health and mental wellbeing, but many children do not meet recommended levels. Research suggests that active play has the potential to make a valuable contribution to children's overall physical activity, whilst providing additional cognitive, social and emotional benefits. However, relatively little is known about the determinants of UK children's active play. Understanding these factors provides the critical first step in developing interventions to increase children's active play, and therefore overall physical activity.
Eleven focus groups were conducted with 77, 10-11 year old children from four primary schools in Bristol, UK. Focus groups examined: (i) factors which motivate children to take part in active play; (ii) factors which limit children's active play and (iii) factors which facilitate children's active play. All focus groups were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using a thematic approach.
Children were motivated to engage in active play because they perceived it to be enjoyable, to prevent boredom, to have physical and mental health benefits and to provide freedom from adult control, rules and structure. However, children's active play was constrained by a number of factors, including rainy weather and fear of groups of teenagers in their play spaces. Some features of the physical environment facilitated children's active play, including the presence of green spaces and cul-de-sacs in the neighbourhood. Additionally, children's use of mobile phones when playing away from home was reported to help to alleviate parents' safety fears, and therefore assist children's active play.
Children express a range of motivational and environmental factors that constrain and facilitate their active play. Consideration of these factors should improve effectiveness of interventions designed to increase active play
Sport for All in a financial crisis: survival and adaptation in competing organisational models of local authority sport services
Policy mixes for incumbency: the destructive recreation of renewable energy, shale gas 'fracking,' and nuclear power in the United Kingdom
The notion of a âpolicy mixâ can describe interactions across a wide range of innovation policies, including âmotors for creationâ as well as for âdestructionâ. This paper focuses on the United Kingdomâs (UK) ânew policy directionâ that has weakened support for renewables and energy efficiency schemes while strengthening promotion of nuclear power and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (âfrackingâ). The paper argues that a âpolicy apparatus for incumbencyâ is emerging which strengthens key regimebased technologies while arguably damaging emerging niche innovations. Basing the discussion around the three technology-based cases of renewable energy and efficiency, fracking, and nuclear power, this paper refers to this process as âdestructive recreationâ. Our study raises questions over the extent to which policymaking in the energy field is not so much driven by stated aims around sustainability transitions, as by other policy drivers. It investigates different âstrategies of incumbencyâ including âsecuritizationâ, âmaskingâ, âreinventionâ, and âcapture.â It suggests that analytical frameworks should extend beyond the particular sectors in focus, with notions of what counts as a relevant âpolicy makerâ correspondingly also expanded, in order to explore a wider range of nodes and critical junctures as entry points for understanding how relations of incumbency are forged and reproduced
Contemporary public library provision in England: a content analysis of the highest and lowest scoring inspection reports
This article adds to the literature on public services inspection by tracking the evolution of the BV inspection process within the service specific context of English public library provision. Drawing upon a range of policy documentation and a longitudinal content analysis of the highest and lowest scoring BV library inspection reports, the article draws attention to the reports' coverage of the libraries' procedures for income generation, competition, outsourcing and public-private partnership. This focus is used both as a means to examine the argument that contemporary public sector reform measures have led to the increased liberalisation and commercialisation of public libraries and to check the stability of the inspection processes over time. The findings from this analysis reveal that although the content of much of the early policy documentation and initial inspection reports lend support to the increased commercialisation and liberalisation argument, a slightly more balanced picture emerges when this analysis is extended to include the findings from more recent library inspection reports. In reaching these conclusions, however, broader question marks about the longer-term stability of the inspection process are also raised
MODERNIZATION AND SPORT: THE REFORM OF SPORT ENGLAND AND UK SPORT
This is the accepted version of the following article: HOULIHAN, B. and GREEN, M., 2009. Modernization and sport: the reform of sport England and UK sport. Public Administration, 87 (3), pp. 678 - 698, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2008.01733.x.This article evaluates the impact of New Labourâs âmodernization projectâ on two key non-departmental public bodies for sport, Sport England and UK Sport. Our analysis concentrates on identifying the sources of the general momentum for modernization in the sport sector, how it has been interpreted by government in relation to the two organizations, the nature and consequences of modernization for both organizations, and the future of modernization. The analysis is informed by a range of public documents produced by government and by the two sports agencies, together with a series of seven interviews conducted with senior staff and members of Sport England and UK Sport and with senior civil servants in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Our conclusions suggest that modernization has resulted in a narrowing of the two organizationsâ objectives, the adoption of business-like principles and a âcommand and controlâ regime in relationships with key frontline delivery partners
The Dynamics of Business, Cybersecurity and Cyber-Victimization: Foregrounding the Internal Guardian in Prevention
Sports participation and the 'obesity/health crisis': Reflections on the case of young people in England
This article is not available through ChesterRep.There has been growing concern in recent years about the emergence of a supposed 'health crisis' - in the form of an 'obesity epidemic' - among young people, one of the maincauses of which, it is assumed, is their declining levels of involvement in sport and physical activity. This brief paper offers some critical comments on the taken-for-granted relationship between these two emergent 'crises' and argues that, in contrast to popular opinion, young people are, in fact, doing more sport and physical activity than at any other time in the past, but that this process has co-occurred, and continues to co-occur, with increasing levels of obesity and overweight. In order to begin to adequately explain these co-occurring processes, it is argued that we need to examine young people's lives in their total context, while noting, in particular, the continuing significance of broader social processes and the networks of relationships in which they are involved