108 | Chapter 14 Measurements The NELLS questionnaires asked respondents to indicate for 10 sports (fitness, jogging, soccer, tennis, field hockey, swimming, martial arts, volleyball, cycling, and other) whether they participated “4 times or more per month”, “1 to 3 times per month”, “less than once a month”, or “not at all”, in the past 12 months. The number of sports was measured as the sum of all sports the respondent participated in. To measure sport frequency, we recoded sporting “not at all” as 0, “less than once a month” as 0.5, “1 to 3 times per month” as 2, and “4 times or more per month” as 4. We then constructed a scale, from 0 to 40, adding the scores for all 10 sport activities. Respondents were also asked in what type of organisation they usually practised the sport they participated in most often. Answer categories were “sport club”, “commercial sport provider (e.g., health centre, gym, climbing hall)”, “alternative sport provider (e.g., a community, company, or student sport programme)”, “not at an organisation (e.g., with friends, colleagues, or family members)”, and “not at an organisation (I practise this sport alone)”. Based on this information, we used the following categories for sport setting: (0) club setting, (1) commercial or alternative setting, (2) informal group setting, (3) individual setting, and (4) not practising sport at all. To identify the major life events that often mark the transition to adulthood, namely, leaving full-time education, beginning work, entering an intimate relationship, starting to cohabit or getting married, and becoming a parent, we used information on education, employment, relationship, civil/marital status, and parenthood in wave 1 and wave 2. Based on these statuses we could determine whether respondents had experienced such a major life event (1) or not (0), and whether the respondent experienced the transition to adulthood within these different life domains before wave 1, between wave 1 and wave 2, or not at all. In the Netherlands (and in a many other European countries as well), lower sport participation rates can be found for women (as described in more detail in the theoretical framework), older age groups, immigrants and lower educated people, compared to their counterparts (The Netherlands Institute for Social Research & Statistics Netherlands, 2016; Tiessen-Raaphorst, 2015; Tiessen-Raaphorst et al., 2014). Therefore, we control for these characteristics. We included (1) female (male=0) and (1) immigrant (at least one parent born outside the Netherlands) (Dutch native=0). Age was measured as a continuous variable, ranging from 14 to 49 years in wave 1. Educational level refers to the
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