34 | Chapter 1 and substantive interpretation of physical, mental, social and economic age factors (Breuer & Pawlowski, 2011) . Physical age factors (i.e., decreasing health and fitness by age; Breuer & Pawlowski, 2011), are probably not well covered by the major life events under investigation in this dissertation. These life events, except for becoming a mother, generally do not directly affect people’s physical condition, and changes found in physical resources mostly stay limited to being tired, lacking energy, and physical discomfort resulting from pregnancy and giving birth. This explains why an additional effect of aging is found and clarifies why many people tend to practise sport less with advancing age, even without these major life events happening, or when their occurrence is taken into account as in this dissertation. Employing the resource approach helps to understand how the impact of life events and aging on sport participation relate to each other. A remaining negative effect of aging is most likely to be explained biologically, by a generally gradual decrease in physical resources, instead of by the investigated major life events and associated changes in resources. Compared to elderly, younger people and adults are biologically more likely to have sufficient physical resources to practise sport. However, major life events marking the transition to adulthood constrain sport participation, as the findings (particularly those in Chapter 5) suggest they usually impair temporal, social and/or economical and to a lesser extent physical resources to practise sport. Contrastingly, events experienced later in life, like children leaving the parental home and retirement, are more likely to be associated with changes in resources which can empower older people to practise sport (e.g., an increased availability of leisure time and flexibility, and a higher social value and pay-off of sport participation). This is reflected by the increased likelihood of starting a sport found in Chapter 2. Therefore, sport participation of elderly is very likely to be constrained by the lack of physical resources due to biological processes of aging. So, when it comes to explaining and promoting sport participation over the life course, major life events and associated changes in resources play an important role in the interpretation of age affects, especially in earlier and “event-dense” life phases like the transition to adulthood. However, the impact of biological processes of aging and associated changes in physical resources should not be disregarded, especially in later phases of life where they are likely to prevail.
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