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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Increase the proportion of children and adolescents who play sports — PA‑12 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About this objective  |  Methodology  |  History

About this objective

Data

Data Source:  National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), HRSA/MCHB

National baseline: 58.3 percent of children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years participated in a sports team or took sports lessons after school or on weekends in the past 12 months in 2016-17

National target: 63.2 percent

Numerator
Number of children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years who participated in sports teams or lessons during the past 12 months.
Denominator
Number of children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years.
National target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
National target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
National target-setting method justification
Trend data were not available for this objective. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because it was a statistically significant improvement from the baseline and the Healthy People 2030 Workgroup Subject Matter Experts expected the data to move in the desired direction during the next decade.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health:

Numerator:
DURING THE PAST 12 MONTHS, did this child participate in:
  1. A sports team or did he or she take sports lessons after school or on weekends?
    1. Yes
    2. No

Methodology notes

There were changes to the wording of this question. Due to changes in the survey's mode of data collection and sampling frame, as well as adjustments to item wording where necessary, Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) alerts data users that it is not possible to compare estimates from the redesigned survey to those from previous iterations of the NSCH or NS-CSHCN or to conduct related trend analyses. The redesigned NSCH will support trend analyses beginning with data from 2016.

History

Revision History
Revised. 

In 2025, the baseline and follow up data points were revised due to changes in imputation and weighting by race and ethnicity methods. The original baseline was changed from 58.4 to 58.3 percent in 2016-17. The target was adjusted from 63.3 to 63.2 percent to reflect the revised baseline using the original target-setting method.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.