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Active Lives Survey 2023-24 Year 7 – full technical report

Children and Young People | Academic Year 2023-24 (Year 7)

Survey background

Sport England is an increasingly insight led organisation that is tasked with the behavioural challenge of getting more people active. To create the right conditions to increase participation, to decide who they invest in, and understand how sport can deliver wider objectives, they need both a broad and deep understanding of sports participation.

Through their commitment to the measurement of sports participation over the past two decades, Sport England have largely unparalleled participation data both internationally and amongst other sporting and cultural agencies in the UK.

Through the Active Lives Survey, they have sought to strengthen this commitment whilst ensuring their data reflects the best available methods of data collection and aligns with their 2021-31 strategy ‘Uniting the Movement’.

They initially developed the Active Lives Survey for adults which started in November 2015. For that survey they piloted new methods, consulted widely with the sector and sought advice from independent experts such as the Office for National Statistics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the development process.

The Sport England 2016-21 strategy ‘Towards an Active Nation’ included an extension of Sport England’s responsibilities to include children from age 5 and over, with a particular focus on building a positive attitude to sport and activity which has benefits in childhood as well as laying the foundations for being active through their adult lives.

During Autumn 2016 they started the development of a new Active Lives survey for children and young people to run parallel to the adult survey, using a methodology and approach which is appropriate for those aged 5 to 16 years old.

Sport England’s new 2021-31 strategy ‘Uniting the Movement’ also focuses on ensuring every child and young person can experience the enjoyment and benefits that being active can bring. The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey has been running for seven years.

Survey and academic year

Survey year Academic year
Year 1 2017-18
Year 2 2018-19
Year 3 2019-20
Year 4 2020-21
Year 5 2021-22
Year 6 2022-23
Year 7 2023-24

The subject of this report is the academic year 2023-24 (Year 7) survey. Throughout this report, academic years are referred to with the survey years (1-7) in brackets; for example, the academic year 2023-2024 is referred to as academic year 2023-24 (Year 7).

Summary of the survey

In this section, we provide a brief overview of the key points in relation to the questionnaire, sample design, fieldwork and data. Full details are provided in the main body of this report. 

The seventh year of the Active Lives Children and Young People survey was conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Sport England, who commissioned the survey to inform both their own strategy and the strategies of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The online survey is school based with pupils selected to take part through their schools.

In the academic year 2023-2024 (Year 7), schools operated without any disruptions in all three terms. In academic years 2020-21 and 2021-22 of the study, the survey had been modified to account for COVID-19 disruptions starting from 2020, as various activities and provisions, such as access to facilities and the mixing of year groups for clubs, were affected.

Details of these amendments can be found in the year 4 technical report. However, since academic year 2022-2023 (Year 5) the survey has not required any adaptations. The option was retained in the survey script for adaptations to be switched on, in the event of any disruption to schools or pupils due to COVID-19, but this was not required.

  • Questionnaire

    The survey employs three different online questionnaires: one for pupils in school years 1-2, one for pupils in school years 3-11 and parents of pupils in school years 1-2, and one for teachers. 

    To ensure the content and language of questions is relevant, within the school year 3-11 and parent questionnaire, individual questions are routed based on whether the respondent is a parent, a pupil in school year 3-4 or 5-6 or a pupil in school year 7-11.

    The questionnaire asked each pupil about the sports and activities they had taken part in over the previous week as well as some questions about swimming, riding a bike, volunteering, attitudes towards sport and physical activity, and wellbeing.

    The questionnaire also included classification questions such as gender and disability or long-term health conditions.

    Teachers were asked about the sports facilities and the PE offer within their school as well as about the PE and sport premium funding, supporting the transition of pupils between primary and secondary school and how the pupils travel to school.

    Teachers were also asked about food education, school food standards, participation in PE and active travel to school in order to provide schools with a Healthy Schools Rating.

    The parent questionnaire asked questions about the activities that their children had done to supplement the answers that their child in school year 1-2 gave with more detailed information.

    For comparability, the academic year 2023-24 (Year 7) questionnaire was kept broadly the same as the academic year 2022-23 (Year 6) version, although there were some changes, described in the Data editing and management section.

    Tables in the Code Book and User Guide show which year groups were asked each question.

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  • Sampling

    The sampling was designed to achieve fixed numbers of returns from children within each local authority in order to permit local level analysis. 

    For the majority of local authorities, this target was 300 returns. To achieve the required sample, the sampling was conducted in three stages.

    First, a sample of 5,658 schools in England was selected from the January 2022 school census. This sample consisted of up to 10 state primary schools in each local authority, up to 10 state secondary schools in each local authority and 370 independent schools across the whole country.

    Each selected school was randomly allocated to one of the three terms in the school year. In academic year 2023-24 (Year 7), schools were allocated to term equally in order to achieve equal numbers in each term. In academic year 2023-24 there were 1,888 schools in the Autumn term, 1,883 in the Spring term and 1,887 in the Summer term.

    Contact and other details for each school were then matched on from the current Get Information about Schools (GIAS) at the time of sampling.

    In academic year 2023-24 (Year 7) the sample was distributed across terms in such a way as to avoid overlap with the Smoking, Drinking and Drugs (SDD) Survey which Ipsos carries out for NHS Digital. This means that some Active Lives Survey schools originally selected for the autumn term which were also in the autumn SDD sample were swapped with a school from the spring or summer term which was not part of the SDD sample.

    Second, a sample of year groups was selected within each selected school. This selection was based on the actual available year groups in each school according to the school census in 2022, not on its classification as a primary, secondary or other type of school.

    Within each selected school, three year groups were selected. The only exceptions to this were in infant schools or other schools with fewer than three year groups. 

    Finally, once a school had agreed to take part, they selected one mixed ability class within each of their selected year groups. This was done by selecting the class in a selected year group which had the first class letter or teacher name in the alphabet.

    Each year the guidance alternates whether the first or last class in the alphabet is chosen to avoid burden on the same teacher each year.

    This method was introduced in academic year 2021-22 when the selection was based on the class name or teacher name first in the alphabet. This was a change from previous years (up to 2020-21) of the survey when Kish grids were used for class selection.

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  • Fieldwork

    Fieldwork was conducted from September 2023 to July 2024, in three phases, aligning with the Autumn, Spring and Summer school terms.

    Schools were invited to participate prior to the start of the term they were allocated to and had until the end of the term for parent, pupil and teacher completions to be submitted.

    Active Partnerships (APs) played a crucial role in recruiting schools to take part in the survey and supporting them through the survey process.

    Each term, APs were responsible for contacting schools and directing them to the survey information (developed by Ipsos and Sport England) which was available online, supporting participating schools through the process of selecting appropriate classes, and providing participating schools with school-specific survey URLs in advance of fieldwork.

    APs also monitored progress throughout each term and provided regular updates to Sport England.

    Pupils in selected classes completed the online survey using computers, smartphones, or tablets either at school or at home. This was usually done during school time, but secondary schools had the option to set it as a homework task. Teachers and parents took part at school or on their own computers, smartphones, or tablets at home.

    Information about the survey was provided to schools, class teachers, pupils and parents in advance of taking part in the survey.

    To incentivise schools and thank them for their participation, Sport England offered participating schools credits which can be spent on a range of sporting and activity-based equipment, through ESPO (Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation).

    Individual school-based feedback also incentivises schools to take part. Schools were eligible for a school-level report if at least 30 valid responses for the activity questions were received (for a full report) or 30 valid responses on attitudes or wellbeing only (for a limited report for schools with responses from year 1-2 pupils). 

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  • Weighting

    The aim of the weighting is to ensure that the analysis carried out using the achieved sample is representative of children in England from school year 1 to school year 11. 

    The weighting takes account of a number of factors that could lead to bias in the results. The achieved sample was weighted to population level data about children in the relevant age groups.

    In addition, school-based weighting was carried out to take account of potential socio-demographic differences in the responding sample (compared with the sample frame, which is the list of schools from which the sample was selected).

    In academic year 2022-23 (Year 6) weighting of the teacher data was introduced for the first time. Weights have also been calculated for teachers for the academic year 2023-24.

    The data for previous academic years have also now been weighted (retrospectively) so that where time series for teacher results are presented in the academic year 2023-24 report, all the estimates for every academic year have been weighted.

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Signposting for the technical report

This report is organised broadly in the order in which survey processes were completed: questionnaire development, sampling, fieldwork, response, weighting, data editing and management.

Terminology used in the report

Those who respond to the survey are referred to as 'respondents'. The reason for not using the conventional term 'participants' is that, in the context of sports participation, participant has a different meaning. 

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