The EPPI Centre has undertaken a major piece of work on engagement in culture and sport, looking at the factors that predict engagement, and the learning impacts of engagement. A knowledge page on this topic can be found here.
The broad findings are:
- Cultural engagement is predicted by: increasing age; higher educational achievement; higher socio-economic status; childhood cultural experiences; media consumption; being female.
- Sporting engagement is predicted by; younger age; media consumption of sport; being male.
- Participation in structured arts activities increases cognitive skills, literacy in the pre-school children, and academic ability in secondary school children.
- Participation in sport increases numeracy skills.
The full papers are:
- Understanding the drivers, impact and value of engagement in culture and sport: an over-arching summary of the research (2010)
- Understanding the impact of engagement in culture and sport: a systematic review of the learning impacts for young people (2010)
- Understanding the drivers, impacts and value of engagement: technical report for the systematic review (2010)
Related journal article: Schucan Bird K, Tripney J (2011) Systematic literature searching in policy relevant, inter-disciplinary reviews: an example from culture and sport. Research Synthesis Methods, 2 (3): 163-173. DOI: 10.1002/jrsm.48