Retrospective survey of youth sports participation: development and assessment of reliability using school records

Abstract : Many youths participate in sports, and it is of interest to understand the impact of youth sports participation on later-life outcomes. However, prospective studies take a long time to complete and retrospective studies may be more practical and time-efficient to address some questions. We pilot a retrospective survey of youth sports participation and examine agreement between respondent’s self-reported participation with high school records in a sample of 84 adults who graduated from high school between 1948 and 2018. The percent agreement between our survey and the school resources for individual sports ranged between 91.5% and 100%. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the reliability of retrospective self-report of youth sports participation. This survey may serve as an efficient approach for evaluating relationships between involvement in youth sports and health outcomes later in adulthood.

The journal version of the paper is available at DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0257487

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Recommended citation: Jin, S., Rabinowitz, A.J., Weiss, J. Deshpande, S.K., Gupta, N, May, R.A.B., and Small, D.S. (2021). "Retrospective survey of youth sports participation: development and assessment of reliability using school records." PLOS ONE 16(9): e0257487.