Projects / Programmes
Evaluation and monitoring of physical activity in Slovenia
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.10.00 |
Social sciences |
Sport |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 3.03 |
Medical and Health Sciences |
Health sciences |
Sport, sporting activity, sports recreation, physical activity, exercise habits, physical fitness, physical fitness test battery, promotion of sporting activity, health, chronic diseases, socio-demographic characteristics, children and adolescents, adults, elderly
Researchers (7)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Sport and other forms of physical activity are an important tool for strengthening physical and mental health, for a more sustainable health care system and for improving the quality of life, from an individual, community and social perspective. Sport and recreational activities have a recognized and appreciated value at all stages of life, but their positive effects are not unconditional, direct and inevitable. In the need to identify a combination of factors and conditions that can steer the otherwise volatile relationship between sport and development in a less uncertain, more informed and positive direction, and in the context of promoting mass access to sport and other less institutionalized and organized forms of physical activity, providing opportunities for sport and raising public awareness, as well as empirically based research and reliable results, are a necessary starting point for the establishment of sport and recreation programs, effective interventions and multifaceted promotion of physical activity. In this regard, one of the main objectives of the Evaluation and monitoring of physical activity in Slovenia project is to analyze the national and international research on physical activity and physical fitness and to address its current shortcomings and oversimplifications both at the interpretative level and at the empirical level of data acquisition. In developing theoretical starting points and attempting to establish the conditions for the practice of physical activity that would be beneficial, more attractive and more accessible to the general population, this project will be attentive and receptive to critical studies that do not remain at the level of symptom interpretation, but seek to identify and explain their causes and conditions. In the recent past, physical activity and exercise have often been subordinated to primarily instrumental reasons, while at the same time, with the promotion of an individualistic ethic and the supposed need for self-care, they have been disconnected from the need to simultaneously understand and consider socioeconomic contexts. The present study will therefore attempt to identify and compare the physical activity habits of the population of Slovenia according to socio-demographic characteristics, to review, process and analyze the results of the Study of Sports and Leisure Activities in Slovenia (SJM, 2021), and, in this context, to formulate proposals for systemic changes that would address the individual stages of life (children and adolescents, adults, the elderly). The empirical level of the research project will complement the theoretical part by critically reviewing existing research and literature in the area of test batteries used to assess physical fitness in the general population. From here, an innovative test battery will be developed and adapted to different age groups - i.e. children and adolescents, adults and the elderly - and chronic diseases in order to obtain higher quality results. During the project, the test battery will also be implemented and tested on appropriate samples of the aforementioned populations, within the framework of which the research project will measure and analyze the physical fitness of the population of Slovenia, identify existing problems and offer possible improvements. In the final phase of the research project, the relevant target public will be informed about the results.
