Article Text
Abstract
Objective To undertake a systematic review of the effectiveness of recruitment mechanisms for engaging and retaining target participants in sports interventions to promote physical activity behaviour change in adults.
Design A narrative systematic review of published studies providing details of the effectiveness of recruitment techniques used in interventions aimed at increasing physical activity via sport in adults.
Data sources Searches were conducted using five electronic databases, clinical trial registers, grey literature and snowballing from reference lists. All papers published in the English language were considered. The search was completed in November 2015.
Eligibility criteria All articles providing information on the recruitment of adults into interventions involving sport and reporting physical activity or participation outcomes were included.
Results Twenty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. The quality of recruitment reporting across included studies was generally classified as poor, lacking detailed descriptions of recruitment processes and providing insufficient reporting of recruitment outcomes. There was a distinct recruitment bias for more affluent, white, middle-aged women. Active-only recruitment techniques appeared to achieve a participant sample with more representative demographic characteristics than passive approaches.
Conclusions Due to inadequate reporting and evaluation, the mechanisms for achieving effective recruitment and engagement in sport, particularly in hard-to-reach groups, are still unclear. Independent of recruitment mode, creating an intervention and context that reflect the interests and motivations of the target audience presents a promising area. There is an urgent need for more robust evaluation design and reporting of sports interventions.
- Systematic review
- Sport
- intervention
- recruitment
- physical activity
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Footnotes
Contributors Charlie Foster gave input and advice that helped inform the systematic review protocol.
Ryan Love acted as a second reviewer.
William Jones, faculty librarian, helped with the search strategy.
Professor Marc Suhrcke, Professor Richard Fordham, Dr Victoria Warburton and Dr Lee Beaumont provided guidance and support.
Funding Funding from Sport England is gratefully acknowledged. The work was undertaken under the auspices of the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence (RES-590-28-0002) that is funded by the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.