128 | Chapter 15 INTRODUCTION Sport participation of individuals is dynamic over the life course. Individual sport careers are shaped by alternations between active sport episodes and episodes of inactivity (Engel & Nagel, 2011) and characterised by changes in activity level and sort of activity (Butcher, Lindner, & Johns, 2002; Lunn, 2010; Scheerder et al., 2006; Seippel, 2005). Sustaining sport participation during the transition from adolescence into adulthood seems particularly challenging (Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011; Malina, 2001; Telama, 2009; Vanreusel et al., 1997). This life phase is often associated with a low stability of and sharp decline in individual sport participation (Engel & Nagel, 2011; Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011; Leslie et al., 2001; Van Tuyckom, 2011), and a high likelihood of dropping out, especially of club-organised sport (Borgers et al., 2016b; Eime et al., 2016; European Commission, 2018; Lunn et al., 2013; Lunn, 2010; Pilgaard, 2013; Scheerder et al., 2006; Van Houten et al., 2017; Vandermeerschen et al., 2016). Moreover, the transition to adulthood is for many people a “socially critical period” of key individual life events which might induce changes in individual sport careers and introduce breaches in the continuity of sport participation: they move out of the parental home and start living on their own, graduate and find their first paid job, start cohabiting and get married and become parents (Allender et al., 2008; Arnett, 2007; Scheerder et al., 2006; Zarrett & Eccles, 2006). Earlier research shows these life events marking the transition to adulthood affect leisure time physical activity, including sport participation, mostly in a negative way (Allender et al., 2008; Engberg et al., 2012; Gropper et al., 2020; Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011). Previous survey studies focussing on sport participation in particular find that the likelihood of starting a sport increases when people begin to work and move out to live on their own, but decreases when they start cohabiting or get married and when they become a parent (Van Houten et al., 2014; Chapter 2 of this dissertation), while all these events increase the likelihood of stopping a sport (Van Houten et al., 2017; Chapter 3). Furthermore, leaving full-time education, beginning work, engaging in an intimate relationship, starting to cohabit or getting married and becoming a parent negatively affect the sport frequency, the number of sports practised and/or the likelihood of switching froma “heavy” club-sport setting to a “lighter”, more informal or individualised setting or to stop practising sport altogether (Van Houten et al., 2019; Chapter 4). This provides valuable empirical insights
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