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Settings-based approaches have become an increasing health promotion focus since the World Health Organization's 1986 Ottawa Charter. While schools, cities, and prisons have implemented this approach, its development within sports environments is recent. Sports are a popular leisure-time activity, requiring validated tools to measure health promotion activity. This study's aim was to develop a measurement tool based on international consensus that measures perceptions of health promotion within sports clubs. It is grounded in the settings-based approach and builds on theory from previous works expanding their context and knowledge. An online, three-round international Delphi study was conducted, inviting experts in sports and health fields to participate in designing the tool. Round 1 created a collaborative list of items; Round 2 validated items based on relevance, importance, and feasibility; and the final round classified items into one determinant category--social, cultural, environmental, or economic. Panelists (69 experts) from 13 countries participated, creating a final list of 62 items at 3 organizational levels; the sports club level included 23 items, the officials level retained 20 items, and the coaching level contained 19 items. This study provides several innovations: (1) applying the settings-based approach to health promotion within sports clubs, (2) defining each club level (sports club, official, coaching) and determinants (social, cultural, environmental, economic) within 3-levels, (3) creating a tool that measures perceptions of health-promotion activities per level and determinant, and (4) obtaining expert consensus on included items. These advancements allow further research on promoting health within sports clubs.

Many researchers and authorities have recognized the important role that sports clubs can play in public health. In spite of attempts to create a theoretical framework in the early 2000s, a thorough understanding of sports clubs as a setting for health promotion (HP) is lacking. Despite calls for more effective, sustainable, and theoretically grounded interventions, previous literature reviews have identified no controlled studies assessing HP interventions in sports clubs. This systematic mapping review details how the settings-based approach is applied through HP interventions in sports clubs and highlights facilitators and barriers for sports clubs to become health-promoting settings. In addition, the mapped facilitators and barriers have been used to reformulate previous guidelines of HP in sports clubs. Seven databases were searched for empirical research published between 1986 and 2017. Fifty-eight studies were included, principally coming from Australia and Europe, describing 33 unique interventions, which targeted mostly male participants in team sports. The settings-based approach was not yet applied in sports clubs, as more than half of the interventions implemented in sports club targeted only one level of the socio-ecological model, as well as focused only on study participants rather than the club overall. Based on empirical data, the analysis of facilitators and barriers helped develop revised guidelines for sports clubs to implement settings-based HP. This will be particularly useful when implementing HP initiatives to aid in the development of sports clubs working with a whole setting approach.

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present study was to determine and compare the levels of objectively assessed physical activity (PA) and sedentary time (ST) among male players aged 10–14 who participate in grassroots football in three European countries (i.e. England, France, and Greece). In addition, the study also examined the relationship of objective levels of PA to a self-report measure of PA frequency used in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey for young football players. A total of 331 participants provided at least three days of valid accelerometer data and completed a self-report measure of PA. The results revealed that players accumulated 122.33 minutes of moderate- to vigorous PA (MVPA) and 488.19 minutes of ST per day. Multiple analyses of covariance controlling for years of experience in football revealed slightly significant differences between the three countries for light PA, MVPA, and the number of active days defined as meeting the [World Health Organization. (2010).Global recommendations on physical activity for health. Geneva: Author. Retrieved fromhttp://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599979_eng.pdf] guidelines of 60 minutes of MVPA per day. English participants spent less time in light PA but more time in MVPA than the Greek or French players. Greek participants had more active days than their English and French counterparts. The self-report measure of PA was not significantly associated with objective PA in this sample of male football participants. Findings suggest that young Europeans who play football meet WHO guidelines for MVPA, but their adoption of an active lifestyle might not protect them from ST behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research arising from self-determination theory (SDT; Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior.Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268) indicates that the quality of the social interactions between athletes and coaches, and athletes' ensuing psychological responses, are critical determinants of intentions to drop out of youth sport. Little is known regarding whether these processes hold across countries. Grounded in SDT, this study tested the invariance of a model predicting youth sport dropout across five European countries. Seven thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine grassroots players (6641 males, 1020 females (Mage = 11.56, SD = 1.40) from youth soccer teams in five countries (England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain) completed a questionnaire tapping perceptions of coach-provided autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction (i.e. autonomy, competence and relatedness), soccer enjoyment, and intentions to drop out of soccer in the next season. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The hypothesised model (autonomy support → basic needs → enjoyment → intentions to drop out of soccer) showed an acceptable fit to the data and provided evidence of configural factor loading and structural path invariance across the five countries. This study supports the applicability of the basic needs theory model as a framework to understand the determinants of drop out intentions in sport among European youth across national boundaries. Findings highlight a potential avenue for intervention that could impact children's enjoyment of, and intentions to continue, playing soccer; namely, interventions that specifically target autonomy supportive coaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]