Research Profile - Taking it to the fields
Dr. Nick Holt
Accounts of gang-based ethnic violence in middle school sports caught Nick Holt's interest. What is it, he wondered, about sports participation that can steer low-income youth away from such behaviours?
A lot of research has been done on the positive impacts of involvement in organized sports – but, says Nick Holt, it's almost all involved kids from middle-income families. Those from low-income families face their own specific challenges and barriers to participating in sport, everything from an inability to afford the fees and equipment to difficulty getting to practices and games because parents are too busy working to chauffeur them.
Plus, he adds, we don't know very much about placing a low-income teen on a team with kids who don't have the same problems – that can be a challenge in itself.
At a Glance
Who: Dr. Nick Holt, Associate Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, University of Alberta
Issue: Participation in organized sport has mostly been studied in the context of middle-income children and adolescents, with very little known about its impact on adolescent males from low-income families
Approach: Dr. Holt is talking with youth, their coaches, parents, and those who fund sports opportunities for low-income youth to determine what the barriers are to such participation.
Impact: Dr. Holt’s research will help develop research interventions and practices that help ensure sport is provided in a way that produces positive experiences for youth.
So Holt is looking at the possibilities for positive development arising from participation in organized sports. This particular project is focusing on males, as part of a CIHR initiative on the health of boys and men. While most of his research has focused on females, Holt is glad to have the opportunity to look at what's unique about the situation for males.
"Boys have been a little overlooked in the whole thing," he says.
Holt's goal is to influence policy to provide more opportunities – and more sustained opportunities – to male adolescents from low-income families. There's always the off-chance that one of these teens will turn out to have the makings of a professional athlete. But to Holt, it's much more basic than that.
Involvement in sport, he says, is important for population health. Low-income males are among the least active and most sedentary groups in the Canadian population. Not coincidentally, they also have some of the worst health outcomes in terms of things like chronic diseases. Investing in sports opportunities for low-income youth now could pay significant dividends in terms of future health.
And, Holt says, we don't have to wait for the benefits. Involvement in sport has immediate benefits for low-income male teens. For one, involvement in sport outside the home provides benefits for family life inside the home, with parents saying that their teens are much more communicative, much easier to get along with. Holt believes it's the impact of the meaningful relationships that tend to be formed on a sports team bleeding over into home life.
How best to involve young males from low-income families in sport is one of the challenges Holt is looking at. Some non-profit agencies provide subsidies to help these teens afford to be involved – but sustaining that involvement beyond a year or two is difficult. And, in other research, Holt and his colleagues have found that the federal government's physical activity tax credit, despite being intended to increase equality of access, is actually being used most by middle- and high-income families – the families who can afford the fees in the first place.
Holt is interested in exploring alternative ways to engage low-income males, from tax credits for the organizations that provide funding, to swipe cards that are loaded with money for use on city programs, an experiment that's been recently tried in Edmonton.
"If sports opportunities are provided appropriately, it can provide positive youth development," he says. "We're trying to get the idea across that sports is important for society."
The Study
Nick Holt is examining the positive and negative aspects of youth sport participation among urban male youth in Edmonton, through interviews. In the first stage, he is speaking with teens and their parents, particularly those who had received financial assistance to participate in sport. He will also speak with adults involved with adolescents, including police officers, social workers, coaches and representatives of the non-profit organizations that provide sports funding. In the third stage, Holt will work with a non-profit organization to look at participation and retention rates. Holt expects the research to result in a framework to guide future research interventions and practices to help ensure that sport is provided in a way that produces positive experiences for youth.
"If adolescents are learning skills that can help in their development, it may prevent them from engaging in negative behaviours."
-- Dr. Nick Holt