Why Measure Participation?
At a
basic level, 'participation' can be viewed in terms of the number of people who
attend an event and engage with event-related ancillary activities and
programmes. Broader measures to evaluate
the success of an event include their impact on altering people's attitudes and
behaviour towards sport participation and cultural engagement.
To assess the additional impact on event audiences,
consideration should be given to the extent to which an event inspires/encourages:
- disengaged
people to become engaged e.g. previously
inactive people doing sport
- those
who are already engaged to increase the regularity and intensity of
participation e.g. previously active
people doing more sport.
Research commissioned by the Department for Culture,
Media & Sport has found that cultural engagement and sport participation
have a positive association with individuals' wellbeing. In monetary terms, the value of the higher
wellbeing from engagement in the arts is valued at £1,084 per person per year,
whereas in the case of sport participation the corresponding value is £1,127.
Download - Participation Toolkit (.pdf, 1511kb)