Sport and Physical Activity Surveys – People selected for the survey are interviewed in their own homes. People aged 18 or over are asked about all the sport and active leisure they have done in the last 12 months, last 4 weeks, and last 2 weeks, to provide annual, 4-week and 2-week participation rates.
Everyone is also asked about the time they spent taking part in their chosen sports and activities in the last 7 days, and on how many of these days they were active for at least 30 minutes. The time adults spend on their chosen sports and activities is added up to give a measure of how active they are over a week – active and inactive are defined below.
Information was collected about young people's participation in sport and active leisure. If there was more than one 5-17 year-old at an address, one young person was chosen for the survey at random. Questions about the young person's participation were answered by the adult who was interviewed, although the young person could help answer the questions if they were present during the interview. Information was collected about all the sport and active leisure young people had done in the last 2 weeks. This short time frame was used because it is assumed that adults were more likely to know about young people's recent behaviour. The time young people spend on their chosen sports and activities was added up to find out how active they are over a week.
Limitations of the survey - The results are analysed so that they are representative of all people living in New Zealand. The Sport and Physical Activity Survey is a sample survey, and so the results are estimates that lie within a range, which is the margin of error, or sampling error. The sampling errors associated with key figures for adults and young people (across all three surveys) are shown below.
| Adults |
Survey
estimate |
95% confidence interval (+/-) |
Young people |
Survey
estimate |
95% confidence interval (+/-) |
| Active |
68% |
1.0% |
Active |
68% |
2.2% |
| Participate in at least one sport or activity in last 12 months |
98% |
0.3% |
Take part in at least one sport or activity in the last 2 weeks |
92% |
1.1% |
As an example, results show that 68% of adults are active, but there is a 95% chance that the actual figure lies between 68% +/- a margin of error of 1.0%, or between 67.0% and 69.0%. Readers should be careful when comparing two figures with a small difference between them as, when the margins of error are applied, the figures may be within the same range, and so the two results may be the same. Readers also should note that margins of error for the young people's estimates are higher because the sample sizes are smaller. For example, the results show that 32% of young people are inactive (68% are active) but, with a margin of error of +/- 2.2% there is a 95% chance that the actual figure is between 29.8% and 34.2%. This will be exacerbated with even smaller samples, such as a number of the age and ethnic groups.
Limitations – As noted above, the primary method for measuring the activity levels of young people was to use the proxy of asking parents to report on the activity level of their children (although if present children could be involved). There are some limitations to this approach as it relies on a parent’s knowledge of their children’s involvement in sport and active leisure. It should be noted however that this limitation is consistent across all three surveys so the results are comparable.
Measures of participation – the results from the survey are used to estimate the percentage and number of adults and young people participating in sport and active leisure. Estimates of the number of participants are calculated using figures from the 1996 Census (for 1997/98 and 1998/99) and the 2001 Census for the (2000/01 survey).
Areas of questioning – The following areas of questioning were not asked in the 1997/98 survey and, therefore, reported results are based on the 1998/1999 and the 2000/2001 surveys only: Maori sports or active leisure activities; reasons why people are spending more/less time taking part in sport or active leisure activities; sources of information that have impacted on participation levels; individual sports and active leisure activities that young people participated in before, during and after school hours (only the total time spent participating was); and adults’ awareness of sporting programmes that the Hillary Commission/SPARC developed for young people and their awareness of regional sports trusts.