A Systematic Review of Factors Associated with Sport Participation among Adolescent Females

Sport participation provides a direct means to attain health-enhancing physical activity; however, sport participation declines during adolescence, and over 85% of adolescent females fail to meet the recommended 60 min of moderate-vigorous physical activity daily. Given the importance of overcoming barriers to sport and increasing equity in women’s sports, the purpose of this systematic review was to identify factors associated with sport participation among adolescent girls and operationalize those factors into theoretical constructs to guide future research. Six databases were systematically searched, and 36 records were included for review. Factors impacting girls’ sport participation were categorized as personal, peer, family, socioeconomic, environmental, or other factors. Of these categories, personal factors, including self perceptions and desirable personal outcomes related to sport, were most frequently associated with sport participation. Most research on girls’ sport participation lacks theoretical framework, so to aid future studies, this review categorized important participatory factors into the constructs of the theory of planned behavior. Future research would benefit from theory-driven prospective approaches to make clear and consistent predictions about factors impacting sport participation, as well as mixed-method approaches aimed to provide more robust understanding of girls’ experiences with and perceptions of factors impacting their participation in sports.