Russian Parents' Perceptions on the Participation, Barriers, and Facilitators of Their Children in Physical Activities and Sports: Focus Group Analysis
Abstract
This article focuses on analyzing the narratives of Russian parents of children 3-12 years old about their children's involvement in extracurricular systematic sports and physical activity (SPSA). In addition, it examines the barriers and agents of involvement in systematic physical activity classes. The empirical material is 4 focus groups with 36 parents aged 27-50 years living in Moscow, St. Petersburg or Tambov (13 fathers and 23 mothers). The results of the focus groups are analyzed by means of thematic analysis and compared with foreign literature on the topic and sociological explanations of children's involvement in SPSA, which the authors construct at the beginning of the article. According to the results of the study, it was found out that according to parents' perceptions there are three groups of children from the point of view of their involvement in systematic extracurricular SPSA activities: not involved, weakly involved and strongly involved. The list of barriers to the involvement of young children in systematic additional SPSA classes includes both a wide list of subjective and objective factors, and there are no universal ones, i.e. shared by all parents. Parents identify the family as the main agent of involvement in SPSA. The research findings in relation to involvement can be explained by existential approaches in sociology and generally reflect foreign studies, although there is a slight difference in the rationales for the low involvement that Russian parents see in the age of the child. With regard to barriers and agents of involvement, all sociological justifications proved to be relevant, and the empirical results obtained correlate with foreign studies. Thus, no striking differences between Russian parents in terms of their rationalizations of children's involvement in SPSA and foreign parents were revealed.
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