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missioned by the Department for Culture, Media andSport (DCMS), Sport England, UK Sport and Arts CouncilEngland to provide a measure of the effectiveness ofcampaigns encouraging people to take more exercise, andto help monitor the growth or decline of particular sportsand leisure activities.
Taking part in the arts, sport and recreation are perceived to
have beneficial social, economic and health impacts. InDecember 2002, the Prime Minister’s strategy Unit andDCMS jointly published a report called Game Plan1, whichincluded a target for increasing the proportion of thepopulation in England that were reasonably active2 from
around 30% in 1998 to 70% in 2020.In April 2004, Sport England published the Framework forSport in England3, which set out the agenda to work
towards achieving the main aims of Game Plan. It has atarget of 1% growth per year in regular sports participationfor people aged 16 or over (with a view to achieving at least50% participation in 2020). It also noted that sport reliesheavily on volunteers.
As stated in its Corporate Plan 2003-2006, Arts Council
England4 aims to increase the number of people who
engage in the arts. It is trying to ensure that there is agrowth in participation amongst Black and minority ethnicgroups, disabled people and socially excluded groups.A consistent set of questions about participation in sportand leisure activities has been asked on the GeneralHousehold Survey at three-year intervals since 19875.
Questions on sport and leisure activities had previously beenincluded on the GHS at regular intervals since 1973. In 1987a new set of questions was introduced in order to improvethe accuracy of the information collected. Respondentswere prompted with a list of sports or activities on ashowcard and asked about participation both in the
previous four weeks and in the 12 months before interview.Prior to thisthe survey had used an ‘open-ended’ questionasking respondents to recall all their leisure activities in thefour weeks before interview. The change to thequestionnaire in 1987 caused a discontinuity in themeasurement of trends.
In addition to the sport and leisure module, the GHSincludes other relevant information that has been drawn onin this report, such as National Statistics Socio-economicClassification (NS-SEC), economic activity status andattendance at leisure and recreational classes.
The 2002 GHS is weighted using a two-step approach. Inthe first step the data are weighted to compensate for nonresponsein the sample based on known under-coverage inthe Census-linked study of non-response6 (Foster, 1994).
The second step weights the sample distribution so that itmatches known population distributions in terms of region,age group, and sex (as used in the Labour Force Survey). Forfurther information on the weighting procedure please seeAppendix D of the main Living in Britain report7.
Notes and references
1 Game Plan: a strategy for delivering Government’s sport and
physical activity objectives. Department for Culture Media
and Sport/Strategy Unit (2002). Also available on the web:
www.number-10.gov.uk/su/sport/report/01.htm
2 Game Plan gave an example of reasonably active as 30
minutes of moderate exercise five times a week.
3 The Framework for Sport in England: making England an
active and successful sporting nation: a vision for 2020. Sport
England (2004). Available on the web:
www.sportengland.org/national-framework-for-spo