Let the data do the talking

Getting to grips with data and understanding what this means can be a challenge. There’s so much of it available but never in one place and often telling a similar, but still different, story.

It can be very confusing!

Data is there to help us design the right solutions, to help us determine the next steps in our strategies and to provide us with a narrative for how and where we should direct our efforts, time and resources.

For this Black History Month, I was interested to see what our Active Lives surveys (our main piece of research) said about black people and their relationship with sport and physical activity.

And while adults being active for at least 150 minutes a week fell 2% from November 2018-2019 to 56% on last year’s survey, I still believe we may be witnessing a positive and upward trend, and that’s a good thing.

We know that your experience of physical activity in childhood is likely to influence how you relate and engage with physical activity as an adult - this is particularly true if the experience is a negative one.

With the exception of black children and young people, specifically among black boys, activity levels are back in line with those seen pre-pandemic for all ethnic groups.

So there’s clearly no room for complacency when it comes to data sets and responding to trends.

The key is keeping people engaged, because when people feel excluded or unwelcome they revert to places and spaces that make them feel less so.

Sometimes these spaces are established just for those representing a specific demographic, or reflecting on the same cultural identity or lived experience.

But they can also be welcoming to all and provide an opportunity to connect and stay connected. That’s what the Tell Your Story report calls parallel or alternative structures.

When the home nation sport councils published the Tell Your Story report alongside the Tackling Racism and Racial Inequalities in Sport (TRARIIS) report back in June 2021, we knew that the findings were going to be difficult to see and read.  

So we took the decision to intentionally engage members of the stakeholder group to work with us to help not only to action the TRARIIS recommendations, but to empower us to be an organisation that values race equality and is committed to ensuring our insight reflects the challenges we have around inclusion, belonging and participation.

We are proud that together we are creating the right conditions to change the negative experiences of culturally diverse communities in sport.

But while data is key, we can’t rely solely on it.

Our mission throughout Uniting the Movement is to reverse worrying trends and to give special attention to the areas where we can help disrupt what could become an acceptable norm.

We need to consider what sits within the insight and get serious about having a better understanding of what motivates and impacts people’s ability to engage positively with sport and physical activity.

And this is especially relevant to inactivity levels for black adults, which the latest survey placed at 31.1%. Too high.

We are well aware of the joys and health benefits of being active, yet we know that there are structural and systemic barriers that get in the way and prevent people from doing so.

So, while we celebrate the positives of the latest data, let’s use the momentum provided by this month to keep working through the year to ensure we are all able to reap the benefits of an active lifestyle.