Active People Survey 1, 2, 3 & 4

Measuring participation in sport and culture

Active People Survey 1 (APS1) was commissioned by Sport England, the leading sports development agency in England. Ipsos MORI was awarded the contract to carry out the survey following competitive tendering in July 2005.  In total 363,724 interviews were achieved between 13^th October 2005 and 16^th October 2006.                                  

In August 2008 Ipsos MORI was awarded the contract to conduct APS2, 3 and 4. The survey is conducted by telephone using RDD (random digit dialling) sampling to generate telephone numbers. APS2 fieldwork started on 15^th October 2008 and will finish on 14^th October 2009.  APS2 will achieve 188,800 interviews overall and provide a minimum of 500 interviews in all of the 354 Local Authorities (LAs) in England.  61,750 boost interviews are also being conducted on behalf of the DCMS. These interviews comprise the six DCMS questions (please see information about National Indicators) and a reduced list of the demographic questions used in APS2. 

The primary objective of APS2 is to measure changes in the levels of participation in sport and active recreation and its contribution to improving the health of the nation.  Sport and active recreation includes walking and cycling for recreation in addition to more traditional formal and informal sports.  When measuring sports participation, the survey not only records the type of activity but also the frequency, intensity and duration of the activity.  APS2 will also provide a robust measure of National Indicator 8.

In addition, the survey measures changes on a range of other important sport related measures such as club membership, involvement in competition, receiving tuition or coaching and contributing to sport through voluntary activity. The survey provides wide ranging demographic information to enable the identification of participation by different social groups.

In light of Sport England's strategy for 2008 to 2011, and the re-focus of its role to develop community sports, further questions were added in APS2 to establish the level of membership of specific types of sports clubs, specific sports people undertake coaching in and specific sports that are undertaken at a competitive level.  A question was also was added to ascertain what sports respondents would like to do, or to do more often.

Collection of data to measure National Indicators 9, 10 and 11

Six further questions were added to APS2 at the start of Quarter 3 (14^th April 2008) to capture information for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).  These questions will be used to provide a baseline for measurement of Local Authorities achievement against three DCMS policy targets. The targets are:

• To increase attendance at museums and galleries (National Indicator 10)
• To increase use of library services (National Indicator 9)
• To increase attendance of creative, artistic, theatrical or musical events and actual participation in these activities (National Indicator 11)

Further information about the Active People Survey can be found on the Sport England website (click here).  To find out how you can access results from Active People Survey 1, please visit our Active People Diagnostic page (click here).