Birds_and_Flies

I am only just writing my first essay!!!! Here is some text: Table 5.1 presents participation rates for Victoria for the 52 activities included in ERAS with participation rate of at least 0.2% in 2007. They are divided into Commonwealth Games and non-Commonwealth Games activities; as with the Olympic Games, aerobics/fitness is included in the Commonwealth Games group as covering a wide range of fitness/training activities. The table shows that, of the 18 Commonwealth Games activities, only five experienced an increase in participation rates over the three year period. Aerobic/fitness shows the greatest increase of +1.0%; it is possible that this was Commonwealth Games-induced but, as we have seen, this activity group has shown a continual increase nationally since the first edition of ERASS in 2001, which suggest that other factors are at work in its continued growth. Athletics/ track and field is one of the most prominent of the Commonwealth Games activities and, while the increase was only +0.2%, this was from a base of just 0.4%, so the number of participants will have at least doubled. Of particular note, on the other hand is the relatively large falls in participation rates for the high profile sports of swimming, cycling, basketball and netball. The non-Commonwealth Games activities showed a similar pattern of decline with, curiously, Australian Rules football showing the largest fall, at -3.4%. about the reason for the increase. For the pre-Games sample the Commonwealth Games did not feature as a reason in any state except South Australia, where it was indicated as a reason by 1% of respondents. For the post-games sample the only state where the games were mentioned as a reason was Victoria, but again the proportion was only 1%. Additional questions were asked about dropping activities and the taking up of new activities in the last year and reasons for doing so: approximately 25% of respondents took up a new activity and 20% dropped an activity. As with the earlier time-related questions, there were no significant differences between the pre-Games and post-Games interviews, no significant difference between Victoria and the other states and the Commonwealth Games did not feature as a reason for the changes. This approach produces an interesting by-product concerning sport behaviour. If 25% take up a new activity each year while 20% drop an activity, this should result in a healthy growth in overall participation but, as we have seen, this is not the case. Further analysis of these results would obviously be desirable to establish the extent to which the changes reflect participants swapping activities and the extent to which they reflect new recruits into sport and the loss of participants from sport. It would also have been interesting if the questions had been continued in subsequent editions of ERASS to see whether the levels were consistent over time.