“[We’re on the right track, baby], we were born that way!” Exploring sports participation in Norway

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Sport, Education and Society on 25/02/2013, available online: doi: 10.1080/13573322.2013.769947Based on quantitative data from the Norwegian Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway) study of Mosjon, Friluftsliv og Kulturaktiviteter, this paper explores trends in Norwegians' participation in sports, with a focus on young people. Norway boasts particularly high levels of sports participation as well as sports club membership and young Norwegians are the quintessential sporting omnivores. Among other things, the Statistics Norway study reveals substantial increases in participation (among young people and females especially) during the period 1997–2007, a shift in the peak of participation to the late teenage years, a relatively high level of lifelong participants, a re-bound effect in the post-child rearing years and a growth in lifestyle sports. Young Norwegians grow up in a socio-economic context of relative equality between the sexes and high standards of living. An abundance of natural and artificial outdoor and indoor sporting facilities alongside a well-established voluntary sports club sector and an elementary school system that emphasizes physical exercise and recreation, as well as high levels of parental involvement, add to the favourable socio-economic conditions to create seemingly optimal circumstances for sports participation. All these reinforce the sporting and physical recreation cultures deeply embedded in Norwegian society and embodied by the very many middle-class parents in a country which, for the time being at least, remains relatively young in demographic terms. In terms of lessons to be learned for policy towards sports and physical education beyond Norway, there may be grounds for some optimism around parental involvement in children's sport as well as the potential appeal of lifestyle sports. That said, it is likely to be the greater socio-economic equalities in Scandinavian countries such as Norway that make them unrealistic benchmarks for sports participation elsewhere

Integration between Women’s and Men’s Football Clubs: A Comparison between Brazil, China and Italy

Despite an increasing interest from media and fans, one of the challenges women’s football currently faces is the lack of resources to sustain its growth at both grassroots and elite levels. To cope with this issue, National Associations (NAs) of various countries have recently formulated a policy demanding men’s football clubs to integrate a women’s team within their structure. Using the Multiple Streams Framework (Kingdon, 1984), this article examines the context, timing and conditions leading to the implementation of the policy of integration in three different countries: Brazil, China and Italy. The authors collected and analysed policy documents and media reports to identify factors influencing the policy formulation. Results indicate declining performances of senior women’s national team, low participation rates, external pressures from supranational football institutions and increased societal need to reduce gender disparities contribute to influence NAs’ engagement with policies for the development of women’s football. While potentially helping women’s football enhance its visibility and commercialisation, the policy of integration risks the women’s game continuing to be seen as subaltern to its men’s counterpart. Implications of the policy of integration for the long-term development of women’s football and its possible future scenarios are discussed

Running the club for love: Challenges for identity, accountability and governance relationships

The current context of State sport governance and funding structures in the United Kingdom continue to challenge national, regional and local bodies and community clubs’ abilities to fulfil ambitions to support participation and competition at all levels. Notwithstanding sport clubs’ laudable intentions to support involvement and encourage participation (often with limited resources, guidance and communication from National Governing Bodies (NGB)), clubs face considerable practical, political and ideological constraints that adversely affect their day-to-day operations and ability to translate sport policy in ‘action’ in meaningful ways. Drawing on data from 21 athletic clubs in England, this paper examines how athletic clubs’ relations with the NGB, UK Athletics (UKA), raise questions about the clubs’ individual and collective identities, agendas, ideals and overall value to its members

Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood? Lifestyle and adventure sports participation among Norwegian youth

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Leisure Studies on 19/08/2014, available online: doi: 10.1080/02614367.2014.938771Based primarily on quantitative data from the Norwegian Statistisk Sentralbyrå (Statistics Norway) study of Mosjon, Friluftsliv og Kulturaktiviteter (Vaage, 2009) supplemented by a little qualitative data, this paper explores Norwegian youngsters’ (and, to a lesser extent, adults’) engagement with conventional and lifestyle sports via an examination of recent trends. Norway boasts particularly high levels of sports participation as well as sports club membership among young people and young Norwegians are the quintessential sporting omnivores. Nevertheless, among the age group where regular participation peaks in Norway (16-19-year-olds) the popularity of games declined over the decade 1997-2007 while participation in lifestyle sports continued to increase (Vaage, 2009). It seems that the particular mix of conventional and lifestyle sports that Norwegian youngsters favour has shifted within a generation, with lifestyle activities more prominent in 2007 than they had been even a decade earlier. The changes in participation in a particular area of sporting participation strongly associated with Norwegian culture – friluftsliv (outdoor life) – may well represent a shift among Norwegian youth towards sports and physical activities that offer alternative forms, as well as types, of participation to conventional sports. They may also represent alternative motivations to those traditionally associated with sport and, for that matter, friluftsliv. The paper draws upon these findings in order to tentatively hypothesize developments in youth leisure-sport in Norway

Public health policy and walking in England - analysis of the 2008 'policy window'.

Although the government in England has a long-standing interest in walking promotion, this has not been accompanied by a coherent strategic plan or investment to support physical activity behaviour change. However, in 2008 the government announced its intention to invest £7 million into walking promotion. This article utilises Kingdon's Multiple Streams framework as an organising principle through which to interrogate the reasons behind the increased emphasis on walking promotion as part of the public health policy agenda in England.The research adopted a case study design. Data were obtained through document analysis of relevant policies and semi-structured interviews with experts in the walking sector, including both government and non-government representatives.Kingdon's Multiple Streams theory proposes that at certain points in time, 'policy windows' are created through the convergence of a problem, an appropriate solution, and a receptive political environment, and this policy window presents an opportunity for major policy change. The findings of this research suggest that the success of London in securing the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was the primary trigger in the creation of a policy window for walking promotion in recent years.Despite previous interest in walking promotion from the health and transport sectors, it was the recent alignment with the sports agenda that led to increased political commitment. This raises concerns that the research evidence on the health benefits of physical activity and rising levels of inactivity in England, are insufficient to secure government support and investment, and that multi-sector lobbying and joined-up political action may be critical in advancing this agenda

Sport policy convergence: a framework for analysis

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in European Sport Management Quarterly on 30th April 2012, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/16184742.2012.669390The growth in the comparative analysis of sport management processes and policy has led to an increased interest in the concept of convergence. However, the concept is too often treated as unproblematic in definition, measurement and operationalisation. It is argued in this paper that a more effective framework for examining claims of convergence is one that analyses the concept in terms of seven dimensions which can be explored through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection. It is also argued that a deeper understanding of the process of convergence can be gained by operationalising the concept in the context of a selected range of meso-level theories of the policy process or of specific aspects of the process. The proposed analytic framework provides not only a definition of convergence but also the basis for a more nuanced investigation of hypotheses of convergence