18 | Chapter 1 sports and sport setting (Chapter 4), and the underlying mechanisms via which major life events affect sport participation (Chapter 5). THE IMPACT OF MAJOR LIFE EVENTS ON SPORT PARTICIPATION. A LIFE-COURSE PERSPECTIVE AND RESOURCE APPROACH. In this dissertation, I study sport participation from a life-course perspective (Elder Jr. et al., 2003; Shanahan et al., 2016). This perspective concentrates on age-related transitions that are socially created, socially recognised and shared (Hagestad & Neugarten, 1985; Heikkinen, 2010). It has been introduced as a temporal research approach that canpotentially help tounderstanding changes in physical activity behaviours over the lifespan (Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011). From a life course approach, individual life courses can be defined as careers (like occupational careers, family careers, sport careers, etc.) that are viewed as a sequence of activities and events both in various life domains and in the attendant institutions and organisations (Engel & Nagel, 2011). From this perspective, the life course is seen as a sequence of life phases characterised by life events that change one’s accustomed pattern of life and daily routine (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). Such major life events (the term used in this dissertation), also known as life change events, transition events, or transitions, can be defined in reference to the MeSH term definition as “those occurrences, including social, psychological and environmental, which require an adjustment or effect a change in an individual’s pattern of living” (MeSH, 1977). According to the working definition put forward by Luhmann et al. (2012), life events “mark the beginning or the end of a specific status. A status is a nominal variable with at least two levels” (p. 4). Life events are thus singular occurrences that lead to a shift from one status to another (Gropper et al., 2020). For example, the transition to adulthood is marked by major life events such as leaving full-time education, beginning work, engaging in an intimate relationship, starting to cohabit, getting married, and birth of the first child (Arnett, 2007; Hirvensalo & Lintunen, 2011; Kilmartin, 2000; Zarrett & Eccles,
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