Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Active Lives Survey (ALS) commenced in November 2015. It replaces the Active People Survey, which ran from 2005 to 2015. The survey provides the largest sample size ever established for a sport and recreation survey and allows levels of detailed analysis previously unavailable. It identifies how participation varies from place to place, across different sports, and between different groups in the population. The survey also measures levels of activity (active, fairly active and inactive), the proportion of the adult population that volunteer in sports on a weekly basis, club membership, sports spectating and wellbeing measures such as happiness and anxiety, etc. The questionnaire was designed to enable analysis of the findings by a broad range of demographic information, such as gender, social class, ethnicity, household structure, age, and disability.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic developed rapidly during 2020 and 2021. Fieldwork for the Active Lives survey continued throughout the pandemic, which covered periods Nov 2019-20 and Nov 2020-21. The data from Nov 2021-22 onwards covers periods without any coronavirus restrictions.

More general information about the study can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (February 2025), the data file was resupplied, with an updated County Sports Partnership variable (CSP_2025), an updated inequalities metric variable (equalities_metric_2024_GR4), and new cultural activities variables (library visits, arts participation/visits, frequency) included.

Main Topics:

Topics covered in the Active Lives Survey include:

• Sport and physical activity
• Health behaviour
• General health and wellbeing
• Sports volunteering
• Sport spectating
• Club membership

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, which was established in September 2017, provides a world-leading approach to gathering data on how children engage with sport and physical activity. This school-based survey is the first and largest established physical activity survey with children and young people in England. It gives anyone working with children aged 5-16 key insight to help understand children's attitudes and behaviours around sport and physical activity. The results will shape and influence local decision-making as well as inform government policy on the PE and Sport Premium, Childhood Obesity Plan and other cross-departmental programmes. More general information about the study can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.

The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, 2017-2018 commenced during school academic year 2017 / 2018. It ran from autumn term 2017 to summer term 2018 and excludes school holidays. The survey identifies how participation varies across different activities and sports, by regions of England, between school types and terms, and between different demographic groups in the population. The survey measures levels of activity (active, fairly active and less active), attitudes towards sport and physical activity, swimming capability, the proportion of children and young people that volunteer in sport, sports spectating, and wellbeing measures such as happiness and life satisfaction. The questionnaire was designed to enable analysis of the findings by a broad range of variables, such as gender, family affluence and school year.

The following datasets are available:

1) Main dataset includes responses from children and young people from school years 3 to 11, as well as responses from parents of children in years 1-2. The parents of children in years 1-2 provide behavioural answers about their child's activity levels, they do not provide attitudinal information. Using this main dataset, full analyses can be carried out into sports and physical activity participation, levels of activity, volunteering (years 5 to 11), etc. Weighting is required when using this dataset (wt_gross / wt_set1.csplan).

2) Year 1-2 pupil dataset includes responses from children in school years 1-2 directly, providing their attitudinal responses (e.g. whether they like playing sport and find it easy). Analysis can be carried out into feelings towards swimming, enjoyment for being active, happiness etc. Weighting is required when using this dataset (wt_gross / wt_set1.csplan).

3) Teacher dataset includes responses from the teachers at schools selected for the survey. Analysis can be carried out into school facilities available, length of PE lessons, whether swimming lessons are offered, etc. Weighting was formerly not available, however, as Sport England have started to publish the Teacher data, from December 2023 we decide to apply weighting to the data. The Teacher dataset now includes weighting by applying the ‘wt_teacher’ weighting variable.

For further information about the variables available for analysis, and the relevant school years asked survey questions, please see the supporting documentation. Please read the documentation before using the datasets.

Latest edition information

For the second edition (January 2024), the Teacher dataset now includes a weighting variable (‘wt_teacher’). Previously, weighting was not available for these data.

Main Topics:

Topics covered in the Active Lives Children and Young People Survey include:

• Sport and physical activity participation
• Well-being
• Health

The Active Lives Survey (ALS) commenced in November 2015. It replaces the Active People Survey, which ran from 2005 to 2015. The survey provides the largest sample size ever established for a sport and recreation survey and allows levels of detailed analysis previously unavailable. It identifies how participation varies from place to place, across different sports, and between different groups in the population. The survey also measures levels of activity (active, fairly active and inactive), the proportion of the adult population that volunteer in sports on a weekly basis, club membership, sports spectating and wellbeing measures such as happiness and anxiety, etc. The questionnaire was designed to enable analysis of the findings by a broad range of demographic information, such as gender, social class, ethnicity, household structure, age, and disability.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic developed rapidly during 2020 and 2021. Fieldwork for the Active Lives survey continued throughout the pandemic, which covered periods Nov 2019-20 and Nov 2020-21. The data from Nov 2021-22 onwards covers periods without any coronavirus restrictions.

More general information about the study can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Active People Survey commenced in October 2005 and was commissioned by Sports England. The primary objective of the survey was to measure levels of participation in sport and active recreation and its contribution to improving the health of the nation. Sport and active recreation included walking and cycling for recreation in addition to more traditional formal and informal spots. When measuring sports participation the survey not only recorded the type of activity but also the frequency, intensity and duration of the activity.

The Active People Survey was replaced by the Active Lives Survey in November 2015. Active Lives is a new survey with a different methodology and intended to measure different outcomes from those in the Active People Survey, however there are similarities as it was important that data could be reproduced on some of the key measures.

More general information can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.



For the second edition (October 2015), the data file was replaced with a new version to reflect changes in the Sport England core measure, the ‘1x30’ indicator. The documentation has also been updated.
Main Topics:

Topics covered in the Active People Survey include:

• Sport and physical activity
• Health behaviour
• General health and wellbeing
• Sports volunteering
• Sport spectating
• Club membership

Poland's commitment to physical activity has shown a steady increase, with 64 percent of the population leading an active lifestyle in 2023. This two percentage point rise over recent years reflects a growing health consciousness among Poles. The trend aligns with the country's thriving sports culture, where volleyball surpasses even football in popularity, capturing the hearts of 37 percent of the population. Booming sports equipment market The rising interest in physical fitness is mirrored in Poland's burgeoning sports equipment market. Projections indicate a robust growth trajectory, with revenue expected to reach 855.07 million U.S. dollars by 2029, marking a substantial 34.94 percent increase over five years. This upward trend is further evidenced by the anticipated rise in average revenue per capita in the sports equipment segment, potentially hitting 22.03 U.S. dollars by 2029, a nearly 40 percent jump from 2024 levels. Diverse sporting landscape Poland's sporting ecosystem is diverse and well-developed, catering to various interests and age groups. The country boasts over 14,000 sports clubs, with student sports clubs accounting for about one-third of this number. This extensive network of facilities supports the nation's increasing physical activity rates. While volleyball and football dominate the sports scene, Poland's most popular sportsman in 2023 was Kamil Stoch, highlighting the country's prowess in winter sports as well.

This statistic shows the ways Italians changed their lifestyle from sedentary to active in 2016, sorted by popularity. According to the study results, the most popular way to incorporate physical exercise into daily life was taking the stairs instead of the elevator, a habit shared by 85 percent of those who started being physically active in 2016. Another popular habit was walking to work instead of taking the car.

% of physically active and inactive adults - active adults.

The provider of data for this indicator is Public Health England based on Active Lives (self-report survey) and Sport England.

This indicator measures the number of respondents aged 19 and over, with valid responses to questions on physical activity, doing at least 150 moderate intensity equivalent (MIE) minutes physical activity per week in bouts of 10 minutes or more in the previous 28 days expressed as a percentage of the total number of respondents aged 19 and over.

*This indicator has been discontinued

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Active Lives Survey (ALS) commenced in November 2015. It replaces the Active People Survey, which ran from 2005 to 2015. The survey provides the largest sample size ever established for a sport and recreation survey and allows levels of detailed analysis previously unavailable. It identifies how participation varies from place to place, across different sports, and between different groups in the population. The survey also measures levels of activity (active, fairly active and inactive), the proportion of the adult population that volunteer in sports on a weekly basis, club membership, sports spectating and wellbeing measures such as happiness and anxiety, etc. The questionnaire was designed to enable analysis of the findings by a broad range of demographic information, such as gender, social class, ethnicity, household structure, age, and disability.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic developed rapidly during 2020 and 2021. Fieldwork for the Active Lives survey continued throughout the pandemic, which covered periods Nov 2019-20 and Nov 2020-21. The data from Nov 2021-22 onwards covers periods without any coronavirus restrictions.

More general information about the study can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.

Latest edition information
For the second edition (February 2025), the data file was resupplied, with updated County Sports Partnership (CSP_2025) and inequalities metric (equalities_metric_2024_GR4) variables included.
Main Topics:

Topics covered in the Active Lives Survey include:

• Sport and physical activity
• Health behaviour
• General health and wellbeing
• Sports volunteering
• Sport spectating
• Club membership

Students were by far the most physically active occupational group in Poland in 2017 - nearly 90 percent led an active lifestyle. The least physically active groups were stay-at-home parents or spouses and retired people.

AbstractThe benefits of the human-animal bond on owners’ health and quality of life have been the focus of research in recent decades. However, the results are still inconsistent. Thus, this study aims to investigate whether the presence of a pet, compared to a control group, influences daily physical activity levels and mental health using a meta-analytic method.MethodsThe PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched for all research articles that included pets as an object of study and related mental health and quality of life variables between pet owners and non-owners until April 2022. The PRISMA 2020 checklist was used, and the Downs and Back checklist was used to assess the methodological quality of the studies. Standardized mean differences and 95% confidence intervals were used to assess the difference between a group of pet owners and non-pet owners.ResultsAn initial search located 11,389 studies, but only 49 studies fulfilled all requirements. Our results indicate that pets have a moderately significant positive effect on the physical activity of owners compared to non-pet owners. Among the moderating variables, the frequency of physical activity showed a highly significant effect, indicating that owners had a higher frequency of physical activity than non-owners. Moreover, our results indicate a significant impact but with a low effect size of pets on owners’ mental health when compared to non-pet owners.ConclusionPet ownership does not seem to influence owners’ mental health, but it does influence their physical activity. Specifically, owners show a higher frequency of physical activity than non-owners.

The data was collected for the TRIAL: TRansitions Into Active Living study funded by NWO (grant no.: NWA.1160.18.249). The original aim of the this study was to examine changes in physical activity and sports during the life transition ‘from primary to secondary education’. Secondary school students were enrolled in the study in October 2020, shortly after they transitioned from primary to secondary education, and were followed until November 2022, shortly after they transitioned to their third year of secondary education. Seven waves of data collection took place. We collected data using questionnaires, motor skill test items, and height and weight measurements.

Community-Based Survey of Supports for Healthy Eating and Active Living (CBS HEAL) is a CDC survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. municipalities to better understand existing community-level policies and practices that support healthy eating and active living. The survey collects information about policies such as nutrition standards, incentives for healthy food retail, bike/pedestrian-friendly design, and Complete Streets. About 2,000 municipalities respond to the survey. Participating municipalities receive a report that allows them to compare their policies and practices with other municipalities of similar geography, population size, and urban status.

The CBS HEAL survey was first administered in 2014 and was administered again in 2021. Data is provided in multiple formats for download including as a SAS file. A methods report and a SAS program for formatting the data are also provided.

Active Living Scores are based on access to bicycle facilities, street intersection density, transit service, walking destinations, and employment density.This data layer is used by the Active Living Index application.

The Active People Survey commenced in October 2005 and was commissioned by Sports England. The primary objective of the survey was to measure levels of participation in sport and active recreation and its contribution to improving the health of the nation. Sport and active recreation included walking and cycling for recreation in addition to more traditional formal and informal spots. When measuring sports participation the survey not only recorded the type of activity but also the frequency, intensity and duration of the activity.

The Active People Survey was replaced by the Active Lives Survey in November 2015. Active Lives is a new survey with a different methodology and intended to measure different outcomes from those in the Active People Survey, however there are similarities as it was important that data could be reproduced on some of the key measures.

More general information can be found on the Sport England Active Lives Survey webpage and the Active Lives Online website, including reports and data tables.

BackgroundThere is a lack of evidence of stakeholder perspective and understanding of physical literacy among relevant stakeholders from England. As part of research commissioned by Sport England to develop a physical literacy consensus statement for England, this study presents findings from the first national consultation with stakeholders in England.MethodsOne hundred and ninety-three individual stakeholders (50.3%) from education, community sport, national governing bodies of sport, physical activity and sport coaching sectors completed an online survey consisting of fixed item and open ended questions designed to examine their knowledge, understanding, perceptions and practices relating to physical literacy.ResultsResponses from stakeholders suggested there was confusion in use of the term physical literacy in practice and confusion regarding the definition of physical literacy. Most respondents suggested they were involved in physical literacy related activity and understood the term. However, when probed the physical literacy related activity they referred to was likely not actually physical literacy related. Understanding of the term physical literacy was inconsistent in general. Stakeholders considered the affective, social, physical and cognitive areas (domains) of learning to be most important for developing a positive relationship with movement, sport and physical activity for life.ConclusionsWhile stakeholders are aware of the term “physical literacy” and hold value of it within their practice, there remain key misconceptions relating to what physical literacy is, and debate as to whether any existing definitions truly capture the construct of physical literacy.

In a survey conducted in the Asia-Pacific region in 2024, about 33 percent of respondents from Japan preferred to shop for active lifestyle products online. In comparison, around 39 percent of respondents from Taiwan preferred to purchase active lifestyle products offline.

The data was collected for the TRIAL: TRansitions Into Active Living study funded by NWO (grant no.: NWA.1160.18.249). The original aim of the this study was to examine the influence of the life transitions ‘starting to work’ and ‘becoming a parent’ on physical activities and sports.In wave 1 (this codebook) we established a baseline of sports and daily physical activities of persons that could be ad risk to start their first real job at the labour market or become parent for the first time. In addition, we mapped the sports career of people from primary school until their first job and / or child if they already make the transition to work and / or parenthood.In wave 2 (October 2022) and wave 3 (October 2023) we hope to include transitions of respondents who started their first job and / or become parent for the first time. Be doing so we can actually see how this affect sports and daily physical activities, which could be explained by the other variables collected.

SUMMARYTo be viewed in combination with the ‘Levels of obesity, inactivity and associated illnesses: Summary (England)’ dataset.This dataset shows where there was no data* relating to one of more of the following factors:Obesity/inactivity-related illnesses (recorded at the GP practice catchment area level*)Adult obesity (recorded at the GP practice catchment area level*)Inactivity in children (recorded at the district level)Excess weight in children (recorded at the Middle Layer Super Output Area level)* GPs do not have catchments that are mutually exclusive from each other: they overlap, with some geographic areas being covered by 30+ practices.GP data for the financial year 1st April 2018 – 31st March 2019 was used in preference to data for the financial year 1st April 2019 – 31st March 2020, as the onset of the COVID19 pandemic during the latter year could have affected the reporting of medical statistics by GPs. However, for 53 GPs (out of 7670) that did not submit data in 2018/19, data from 2019/20 was used instead. This dataset identifies areas where data from 2019/20 was used, where one or more GPs did not submit data in either year (this could be because there are rural areas that aren’t officially covered by any GP practices), or where there were large discrepancies between the 2018/19 and 2019/20 data (differences in statistics that were > mean +/- 1 St.Dev.), which suggests erroneous data in one of those years (it was not feasible for this study to investigate this further), and thus where data should be interpreted with caution.Results of the ‘Levels of obesity, inactivity and associated illnesses: Summary (England)’ analysis in these areas should be interpreted with caution, particularly if the levels of obesity, inactivity and associated illnesses appear to be significantly lower than in their immediate surrounding areas.Really small areas with ‘missing’ data were deleted, where it was deemed that missing data will not have impacted the overall analysis (i.e. where GP data was missing from really small countryside areas where no people live).See also Health and wellbeing statistics (GP-level, England): Missing data and potential outliers dataDATA SOURCESThis dataset was produced using:- Quality and Outcomes Framework data: Copyright © 2020, Health and Social Care Information Centre. The Health and Social Care Information Centre is a non-departmental body created by statute, also known as NHS Digital.- National Child Measurement Programme: Copyright © 2020, Health and Social Care Information Centre. The Health and Social Care Information Centre is a non-departmental body created by statute, also known as NHS Digital. - Active Lives Survey 2019: Sport and Physical Activity Levels amongst children and young people in school years 1-11 (aged 5-16). © Sport England 2020.- Active Lives Survey 2019: Sport and Physical Activity Levels amongst adults aged 16+. © Sport England 2020.- GP Catchment Outlines. Copyright © 2020, Health and Social Care Information Centre. The Health and Social Care Information Centre is a non-departmental body created by statute, also known as NHS Digital. Data was cleaned by Ribble Rivers Trust before use.- Administrative boundaries: Boundary-LineTM: Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2021. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.- MSOA boundaries: © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2021.COPYRIGHT NOTICEThe reproduction of this data must be accompanied by the following statement:© Ribble Rivers Trust 2021. Analysis carried out using data that is: Copyright © 2020, Health and Social Care Information Centre. The Health and Social Care Information Centre is a non-departmental body created by statute, also known as NHS Digital; © Sport England 2020; © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2021. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.CaBA HEALTH & WELLBEING EVIDENCE BASEThis dataset forms part of the wider CaBA Health and Wellbeing Evidence Base.

Associations of participant and neighbourhood characteristics to age in place with physical activity, as determined by multilevel analysis.