PASI - Physical Activity and Sport Insights

13/10/2026

Who helps shape your physical activity program?

Understanding community needs includes involving intended participants in decisions about how programs are designed and delivered.

Recent research by Casey, Porter and Eime explored how culturally diverse women and local government staff could work together to develop physical activity opportunities.

Through co-design workshops, women helped identify barriers and shape program details, including activities, location, timing, costs and support needs.

The resulting programs incorporated features such as childcare, women-only sessions and opportunities for social connection.

For local governments, the study offers useful considerations for planning:

• Are intended participants involved early enough to influence program decisions?
• How are their experiences reflected in the activities and support offered?
• How will participant feedback inform ongoing adjustments?

Identifying preferred activities is one part of program development. Understanding what enables people to take part-and incorporating that understanding into delivery-is equally relevant to planning.

Co-design offers a practical way to bring lived experience into these decisions and develop opportunities that respond to community needs.

PASI’s Professor Rochelle Eime will be discussing this research at Home Ground Advantage on 23 October 2026 at Casey Fields.

Contact PASI to discuss how research can inform your participation planning, or view the event link in the comments below.

09/10/2026

What can participation maps reveal about local priorities?

A participation map can highlight patterns worth investigating. Understanding what those patterns mean requires context.

For sporting organisations and local governments, considering sport participation data alongside community characteristics can help guide questions about local needs:

• Where do participation patterns warrant closer investigation?
• How do population size, age profile and other community characteristics help put those patterns in context?
• What additional evidence is needed before identifying a planning priority?

The interpretation matters. Lower recorded participation in an area does not, on its own, explain the barriers residents face or establish a need for a new facility or program.

Further analysis, local knowledge and community consultation can help organisations understand what may sit behind the pattern and assess an appropriate response.

PASI uses spatial data, different datasets and maps as part of its research and analysis. These can contribute to an evidence base for participation and facility planning when considered alongside other relevant information.

The value of a participation map lies in the questions it helps organisations ask—and the evidence they gather before acting.

Speak with PASI - Physical Activity and Sport Insights about the evidence behind your local participation priorities.

06/10/2026

Sharing community sport research with an international audience.

Professor Rochelle Eime recently presented “Player Participation, Retention, Dropout and Re-Engagement in Community Sport” at the EASM European Association for Sport Management Conference in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Presented as part of the Sport Consumer Behaviour session, the research was co-authored with Katherine Owen, Melanie Charity and Kylie Moulds.

The conference provided an opportunity to share the findings and discuss community-level player retention and re-engagement in an international sporting context.

Understanding who continues playing, who leaves and who returns is an important part of examining participation over time. These questions support a broader conversation about sustained involvement in community sport.

30/09/2026

If participant numbers increase, does that mean a greater proportion of the community is taking part?

The answer depends on how the population has changed.

Participant numbers show how many people are involved. Participation rates place those numbers in context by relating them to the relevant population.

If that population grows faster than participant numbers, the participation rate can decline despite an increase in participants. This distinction matters when assessing how participation is changing within a community.

For councils and sporting organisations reviewing their results, useful questions include:

• How have participant numbers changed relative to the population?
• Are we comparing the same geographic areas and age groups?
• Are the reporting periods and definitions consistent?

Together, these checks provide a clearer basis for interpreting growth. They can help identify where further investigation is needed, while recognising that participation rates alone do not explain why patterns have changed.

PASI incorporates Australian Bureau of Statistics population data to calculate participation rates, supporting analysis of participation within its community context.

When reviewing your next participation report, consider both the number of people involved and the proportion of the community they represent.

Is population context part of your organisation’s participation reporting?

25/09/2026

The affordability of community sport remains an important topic of public discussion, with further coverage in the Herald Sun recently.

A portion of Professor Rochelle Eime’s opinion piece highlights the financial pressures families face in keeping children involved in sport.

It is encouraging to see this issue receiving continued attention, helping maintain a focus on how cost shapes access to community sport.

23/09/2026

It’s encouraging to see ABC News bringing national attention to the Cost of Sport research led by Professor Rochelle Eime.

By connecting the findings with one family’s experience, the story highlights why this research matters to the wider conversation about affordability and access to community sport.

Read the full story below.

Rockhampton parents Aaron and Paula Harmsworth know the cost of keeping three children involved in multiple sports, as research finds families are spending thousands more than just registration fees.

17/09/2026

Participation data does more than show how many people play sport. It can help identify when participation changes and where stronger approaches to retention may be needed.

Professor Rochelle Eime, Director of PASI - Physical Activity and Sport Insights, recently delivered a keynote presentation, *Participation in Community Sport*, at the Mitchell Shire Council Sports Club Forum.

The presentation explored sport participation trends and how clubs can use evidence to better understand and inform their approaches to player retention.

For Mitchell Shire, substantial population growth adds another dimension to this discussion: ensuring there is enough sporting infrastructure and appropriate programs to support a growing community.

Planning for that growth requires an understanding of both future demand and the needs of existing participants. Recruitment is only one part of participation growth. Supporting people to remain involved requires an understanding of how participation changes across different ages and stages of life, and the factors that may influence whether players continue or disengage.

Reliable participation evidence can help clubs and councils identify patterns, inform infrastructure and program planning, and review how well current opportunities support ongoing involvement.

Connecting research with those delivering sport at the community level is central to developing more informed and sustainable participation strategies.

Thank you to Mitchell Shire Council for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion.

15/09/2026

What will your end-of-season review tell you-beyond how many people registered?

As winter seasons draw to a close, SSOs, NSOs, clubs and associations will begin reviewing participation results and planning for the year ahead.

Total registrations provide one measure of performance. When participant data is collected consistently, it can also help organisations examine:

- Who is participating
- Where participants are located
- Which competition, modified or social formats they join
- How participation and retention patterns change over time

The quality of these insights, however, depends on the quality and consistency of the underlying data.

PASI - Physical Activity and Sport Insights best-practice resource draws on over a decade of participant registration data, spanning 1 million records analysed annually across major Victorian sports. It was developed through collaboration with Victorian State Sporting Associations and supported by VicHealth and Sport and Recreation Victoria and Vicsport.

The project methodology identifies several practices that can strengthen the value of participant data, including:

- Using unique participant IDs to support analysis over time
- Applying consistent categories across competition, modified and social programs
- Collecting relevant demographic information in a standardised way
- Reviewing registration systems for missing or inconsistent entries

These practices can help sporting organisations better understand participation and retention, support geographic and facility planning, and provide a stronger evidence base for future programs and investment.

Before relying on your season-end results, it is worth asking two questions:

What does our participant data tell us-and how confident are we in the way it was collected?

Is your participant data ready to support planning for the season ahead?

08/09/2026

A concerning change is emerging in the sport participation pathway — and it is occurring earlier than many might expect.

New peer-reviewed research drawing on 10 years of data from the Sport Participation Research Project has identified declining participation rates among children aged 10 and 11.

This is particularly significant because participation has traditionally peaked around these ages.

The sector is familiar with participation declining during adolescence, when school, work, social commitments and other demands increasingly compete for young people’s time.

A decline among 10- and 11-year-olds cannot be explained as readily by those same pressures.

Why does this matter?

→ Children who disengage earlier may miss important opportunities to develop sport-specific skills and confidence.

→ Entering or returning to sport during adolescence can become more difficult when peers have already accumulated several years of experience.

→ A growing difference in skills and confidence can create an additional barrier to participation.

→ For sporting organisations, fewer participants at the traditional peak age may weaken retention throughout the broader participation pathway.

The research does not attribute this decline to one particular cause. Instead, it highlights the need to examine what is changing in children’s experience of sport and whether current policies, programs and participation models remain appropriate for this age group.

It also demonstrates the importance of examining participation by individual age and over time. Broader age categories can obscure important changes occurring at critical points in the participation pathway.

If the decline is already beginning at 10 or 11, waiting until adolescence to focus on retention may be too late.

Read the full paper, Longitudinal Trends in Sport Participation for Children and Youth: The Role of Sport Policy, via the link in the comments.

03/09/2026

Australia’s $15.6 million investment over four years to support Pacific athletes and officials on the road to Brisbane 2032 demonstrates what sustained, pathway-focused support can make possible.

The initiative will help athletes from 13 Pacific nations access high-performance training, competition and qualification opportunities ahead of events including the Tahiti 2027 Pacific Games and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

It also prompts an important question closer to home: what could similarly coordinated and sustained investment achieve for participation in Australian community sport?

New national research conducted by PASI - Physical Activity and Sport Insights at Federation University Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Sports Commission, surveyed 5,533 participants across 67 children’s sports and 77 adult sports.

The study found that:

→ Families spend an average of $4,567 each year for a child to participate in community sport.

→ Average entry-level costs alone-including registration, clothing and equipment-total $1,161 per child.

→ Among current participants, 67% said cost limited their participation decisions, rising to 78% for children.

The impact is not experienced equally. People with disability, culturally and linguistically diverse participants, and those living in disadvantaged areas were more likely to report cost as a limiting factor.

Regional and remote families also face different pressures, spending almost twice as much on travel and accommodation for children’s sport as families in major cities.

Cost is only one of the factors influencing why people enter, remain in or leave sport. However, these findings demonstrate that affordability must be addressed if the sector is serious about creating accessible and sustainable participation pathways.

Supporting Pacific athletes and improving access to community sport in Australia are not competing ambitions. Both require long-term thinking, coordinated action and investment directed towards the barriers participants actually experience.

What could a sustained national commitment to community sport affordability look like-and where could it make the greatest difference?