SIRC articles provide evidence-based and actionable insights from sport researchers, athletes, coaches, sport organizations and thought leaders to advance sport in Canada.
The unanimous choice: How a 12-year-old girl became captain of a boys’ hockey team
There is an assumption in sports that leadership is earned through tenure, skill, and a certain kind of presence—the intangible, ineffable quality that separates the good from the great. But every once in a while, a story emerges that challenges those assumptions and more. In Sarnia, Ontario, a 12-year-old girl named Laylah Stokes did just…
Project summary The purpose of this research was to study extra-curricular activity (ECA) involvement in a broad range of Canadian youth, and to examine how this might vary by age, gender and geographical context (e.g. rural vs. urban settings). Of...
Project summary Given the rate of children’s physical inactivity, it is important to identify strategies that assist individuals in self-regulating their physical activity behaviors. Imagery is one such strategy. Children’s use of imagery has been investigated in sport, but not...
Background / Context / Objective With growing societal concern for youths’ healthy development, extensive literature suggests organized leisure activities serve as optimal contexts to foster positive youth development (Larson, 2000), and sport has consistently been found to be the most...
Project summary This study uses a random group of adults in Hamilton, ON to determine what barriers to sport are preventing adults from being active through sport. The research using data from a questionnaire that was part of a larger...
Project summary The main purpose of this research program was to help build more meaningful and relevant sport and recreation-based programs for Indigenous youth through the examination of a series of multidisciplinary analyses and case studies (mainly the Promoting Life-skills...
Background / Context / Objective The benefits of sport participation among youth are well recognized, yet little work has focused on understanding sport participation among very young children, despite growing participation at increasingly early ages. The first objective of this...
Project Summary A series of investigations was designed to create building blocks for a process of guiding physical activity choices among high school students and young adults based on psychosocial information and experiential processes. The initial studies explored patterns of...
Project abstract In general, sport is seen as a powerful contributor to social and personal development (Sport Canada, 2002). The benefits of physical activity and sport have been the subject of numerous studies (Gendron et al., 2005; Parfitt & Eston,...
Project Summary This study explored how urban Aboriginal young women understand and experience their participation in a sport for development (SFD) program administered by the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Society Centre (VAFCS); and investigated how corporate funding and involvement in the...
Project Summary Sport involvement in Canada drops precipitously as we age. Recent Canadian data indicate that participation rates are highest in young Canadians, with 54% between the ages of 15 and 19 taking part in sporting activity. By age 55,...
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