Children's Experience of Sport: What Do We Really Know?

Abstract

Internationally, children's participation in leisure activities, including sport, is considered to be of such importance that it is enshrined as a human right. However, there is a growing awareness that children's experience of sport is not always benign; abuse and harm frequently occur within a broad range of organised sport contexts. This systematic literature review examines the international research evidence from both peer reviewed and grey literature on the abuse and harm of children that can occur in sport. Four areas of focus were apparent in this literature: first, types of abuse encountered by children in sport and the harm caused to them; second, persons responsible for the abuse and harm; third, circumstances under which children may be most vulnerable; and fourth, the role that culture plays in facilitating abuse in sport. The paper concludes identifying the need for further research in this domain.

国际上把儿童参与包括体育在内的休闲活动看得十分重要，看成了一项人权。不过，越来越多的人注意到，儿童的体育经验并不总是美好，虐待及伤害在很多类体育中都有发生。本文对有关文献做了系统研究，考察了专业及灰色文献中对体育中儿童虐待及伤害的国际研究。文献中有四个很明显的焦点领域：儿童在体育活动中遭遇虐待的类型；要对虐待及伤害负责的人；儿童最易受伤害的环境；容易造成虐待的文化因素。 这个领域需要进一步的研究。

Keywords:

• Children
• Children's Rights
• Abuse and Harm in Sport

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Table 1 is available via the “Supplementary” tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2015.1055508).