A Wider Social Role for Sport: Who's Keeping the Score?

Synopsis

Sport is perceived to have the potential to alleviate a variety of social problems and generally to ‘improve’ both individuals and the communities in which they live. Sport is promoted as a relatively cost effective antidote to a range of social problems – often those stemming from social exclusion - including poor health, high crime levels, drug abuse and persistent youth offending, educational under-achievement, lack of social cohesion and community identity and economic decline. To this end, there is increasing governmental interest in what has become known as ‘sport for good’. A Wider Social Role for Sport presents the political and historical context for this increased government interest in sport’s potential contribution to a range of social problems. The book explores the particular social problems that governments seek to address through sport, and examines the nature and extent of the evidence for sport’s positive role. It illustrates that, in an era of evidence-based policy-making, the cumulative evidence base for many of these claims is relatively weak, in part because such research is faced with substantial methodological problems in isolating the precise contribution of sport in many contexts. Drawing on worldwide research, A Wider Social Role for Sport explores the current state of knowledge and understanding of the presumed impacts of sport and suggests that we need to adopt a different approach to research and evaluation if sports researchers are to develop their understanding and make a substantial contribution to sports policy..

Copyright:

2008

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781134227112

Related ISBNs:

9780415363495

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

01/05/18

Copyrighted By:

Fred Coalter

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Sports, Sociology

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.