‘They’ve just never been involved in it’: what senior athletes think about older people who do not participate in sport

ABSTRACT

To date, despite the many recognised benefits of participation in sport, many older people do not participate in it. This study explored the opinions about barriers to participating in sport among non-active older people from the perspective of 463 senior athletes (M = 61.4, SD = 5.5 years) engaged in competitive sports. Participants completed a questionnaire including an incomplete sentence regarding the reason why many older people do not play sports. We analysed their answers using content analysis and performed bivariate analyses to determine possible associations with the sociodemographic and participatory characteristics of the sample. The results highlighted a range of perceived barriers which mostly related to past and present opportunities, and contained significant variations according to age, country of residence, and years participating in sports. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the way in which senior athletes perceive the barriers for the initiation of non-active older people in sports participation which could inform potential measures to promote greater participation in sport as a meaningful leisure activity among this age group.

KEYWORDS:

• Older athletes
• barriers
• competitive sport
• beliefs
• sport participation
• serious leisure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spain’s Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (PSI2016-77864-R) under Grant BES-2017-080321 to the first author. The second author is a Serra Húnter Tenure-Track Lecturer at the University of Barcelona.

Notes on contributors

Valentina Cannella

Valentina Cannella is a member of the Gerontology Research Group at the Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology of the University of Barcelona, Spain. Her research interests include sport and high-intensity physical activity in later life, with a focus on competitive older athletes.

Rodrigo Serrat

Rodrigo Serrat is a Serra Húnter tenure-track lecturer at the Department of Cognition, Development, and Educational Psychology of the University of Barcelona, Spain. His research focuses on civic engagement in later life, with particular attention to issues of inclusion and diversity.

Feliciano Villar

Feliciano Villar is a full professor at the Department of Cognition, Development, and Educational Psychology of the University of Barcelona, Spain. His research interests include generativity and older people’s contributions in later life and nursing home policies and practices regarding participation and residents’ rights.

Adam Brian Evans

Adam Brian Evans is an associate professor in Sociology of Sport at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sport (NEXS), the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). His research interests include ageing, sport and physical activity, embodiment in sport and exercise, disability sport and globalisation.