Sport satisfaction

Detailed results from the sport satisfaction survey have been published

People will only keep playing sport if they enjoy it. So Sport England has developed an innovative satisfaction survey which helps us measure satisfaction levels within individual sports. We will use this information to help us make investment and planning decisions.

Understanding and measuring the quality of experience is a crucial element of our strategy and is central to our commitment to develop a world-leading community sport system.

Our focus is around three outcomes - growing and sustaining the numbers of people taking part in sport and improving talent development to help more people excel.

The Sustain outcome focuses on keeping people involved with sport. At its heart is the idea that people's continued involvement is driven by the fact that they enjoy taking part and that this - in turn - is heavily affected by the quality of the sporting experience.

The research provides a statistically robust measure of satisfaction with the quality of the sporting experience by individual sport.This has given us a basis for tracking the achievement of national targets for each sport. The survey will also support improved planning and investment decisions by providing greater understanding and knowledge of satisfaction profiles in each sport.

What are we measuring?

We are measuring satisfaction in 45 different sports, and within each sport, across three target goups  - general participants, affiliated club members and the talent pool.

The survey measures satisfaction across different areas to include:

  • Value for money
  • Performance
  • Social/belonging
  • Facilities and playing environment
  • Organisation: people and staff
  • Organisation: ease of participating
  • Diversion and release
  • Exertion and fitness
  • Officiating
  • Coaching.

We developed the research in consultation with national governing bodies of sport, a review of previous studies in this area, scoping work undertaken by Ipsos MORI, and qualitative research which the Henley Centre carried out in 2008 on our behalf.

For more information, read our FAQs.

The questionnaires for general participants and affiliated club members and for the talent pool can be downloaded.

The fieldwork for the first year of the survey was completed in 2009. Fieldwork took place between March and May 2009 with approximately 44,390 respondents completing the survey. 

Headline results from the 2009 survey for each of the 45 sports are available. These highlight the overall satisfaction score for each sport and for each group within each sport (general participants, affiliated club members and the talent pool).

The headline results are official statistics and must comply with legislation relating to the publication of government data. You can find out more about Sport England's official statistics on this page.

To accompany the publication of the headline results, we published a briefing note with background information on the survey including the survey process, and how the satisfaction scores are calculated.

More detailed results from the 2009 survey were published in October 2009.

The second year of the survey (2010) will run at the same time as the 2009 survey, with fieldwork between March and May 2010, and headline results available in June 2010.

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