A Scoping Review of Recreational Sport Programs for Disabled Emerging Adults

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Recreational sport programs are a critical but overlooked pathway for enhancing social participation of emerging adults with disabilities. Specifically, the experiences of recreational sport program members are important for continued community engagement among emerging adults. To address this gap, this scoping review examined the published studies on recreational sport programs for emerging adults with disabilities with the aim of providing future directions for practice (e.g., program instruction) and research (e.g., measurement). Method: Using the PRISMA-SR guidelines, six electronic databases were searched using key terms of disability, age, and recreational sport; findings were extracted and summarized according to the quality parasport participation framework (autonomy, belonging, challenge, engagement, mastery, meaning) and other outcome measures of the included studies. An online 26-item survey was sent to the included studies’ authors to further explore the programs’ conditions. Results: There were 16,818 records screened with seven articles included. Studies indicate positive outcomes for emerging adults with disabilities immediately following participation in sport programs (e.g., improved self-esteem, autonomy, friendship skills, and balance). No longitudinal studies have been conducted on sustained participation in sport programs or transfer effects of participation. Conclusion: Despite the limited literature, this scoping review provides the foundation for the development of evidence-informed, participant-driven sport programs for emerging adults with disabilities. This study highlights areas for further development for both researches (e.g., evaluating and reporting quality) and practice (e.g., program evaluation).

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• community
• disability
• practice

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Erica Lenton for her expertize and guidance in crafting the keyword search and Dragana Javorina for assisting with the screening process. Thank you to the original authors of the included studies for completing the online survey. We would like to also acknowledge the support of the Canadian Disability Participation Project and the Mental Health and Physical Activity Research Center. Funding was provided in a doctoral scholarship to Ms. Orr by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant #767-2018-2533.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

¹ For the purposes of this paper, recreational sport includes all programs and groups that provide sport experiences where organized competition with groups or teams outside of the program is not the primary focus (e.g., no varsity or provincial level programs) and occurs outside of the physical education system (i.e., out of school settings).

² The framework was used by the research team as a perspective, not a benchmark, with which to explore the existing literature—using common vocabulary and structure to describe current knowledge.

³ Part two reviews the online search of recreational sport programs for emerging adults with disabilities and will be published separately.

⁴ Proxy measures are those that the research team classified the measures or outcomes of the included studies according to alignment with six quality experience elements and, for those that did not align, to name a category for them.

Additional information

Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant [#767-2018-2533].