1 | 27 Synthesis stopping a sport and ending club membership for young women, but not for young men. The overall findings suggest these four major life events that mark the transition to adulthood play a role in explaining the sport participation of young adults, as their occurrence is associated with an increased likelihood of dropping out of a sport and/or ending a club membership. The transition to adulthood: A game changer!? A longitudinal analysis of the impact of five major life events on sport participation (chapter 4) Besides that the occurrence of major life events can help or hinder starting a sport over the life course (chapter 2) and increase the likelihood of stopping a sport and/or ending a club membership among young adults (chapter 3), they might also induce more subtle changes in sport participation. In this fourth chapter I examine if this is the case during the transition to adulthood, by addressing the following research question: to what extent do major life events that mark the transition to adulthood affect (1) the number of different sports practised by individuals, (2) the frequency of sport participation, and (3) the switch from practising sport (mostly) in a club setting to practising sport in other informal or organisational settings, or to not practising sport at all? The fivemajor life events under investigation are: leaving fulltime education, beginning to work, engaging in an intimate relationship, formalising a relationship through cohabitation or marriage and becoming a parent. I apply the same resource approach as in the previous empirical chapters to explain the effects of these life events. In line with this approach, I reason that a reduction of temporal resources and increase of professional and social obligations related to the occurrence of major life events induce people to re-evaluate and seek for alternative ways to continue sport participation during their transition to adulthood. This leads me to expect that the major life events reduce the sport frequency and number of sports practised and increase the likelihood of switching from a “heavy” club setting to a “lighter” setting (or dropping out of sport altogether) during the transition to adulthood. The expectations are empirically tested by employing panel data (2009 and 2013) from the Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (NELLS). It provides longitudinal information on education, employment, relationship, civil/marital status, and parenthood for 2829 Dutch citizens (ages 15–45) and their sport behaviour, which makes it possible to distinguish between-differences of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw