Girls Active Survey and Insight Report

The Youth Sport Trust’s Girls Active Survey supports schools to gain student insight through an online survey to understand the participation levels, attitudes, motivations and barriers to participation.

We are pleased to be able to provide this opportunity for schools in England to participate in the survey. Each school will receive a School Insight Report based on the collated responses of students in your school. A example of the report schools will receive is provided in the downloads below.

If you are interested in registering your school to take part in the survey, please read the below information and then follow the link to register by 25 May. You will then receive the survey link on 01 June. See below for full timeline for the survey completion.

About the survey

The survey is available for female students in key stages 2, 3, 4 and 5 (and male students if you wish to receive a separate report). There are short and long survey options. The short survey is age-appropriate for primary students and is the survey that all primary students will complete. Secondary schools can choose for students to complete the short or long survey. If you are an all-through school, it is possible for primary students to complete short and secondary students to complete the long survey. You will be asked to confirm your preference in the registration process.

You will then receive a survey link on 01 June which will reflect the responses you give in this registration process. This link can be used for girls as well as boys (if you wish to receive a separate report for boys in your school). Responses to the survey using this link will also be attributed to your school only, therefore, please do not share the survey link with any other school.

Please see the long and short survey questions available in the downloads on the right hand side to help you decide which option is appropriate for your students if you are a secondary or all-through school.

Please note:

In the long version of the survey secondary aged girls will also be able to choose whether they complete an additional 4 short questions about taking part in PE or school sport when they are on their period, as well as how comfortable they are talking to their teacher about periods. They do not have to answer these 4 questions if they don’t want to.

The survey also asks students for some personal data such as their gender, year group, ethnicity, disability and free school meal status. In addition, for secondary age students we would like to ask a question in the survey about their faith/religion and their sexual identity. These questions are detailed in the long survey and help us to understand the responses of young people from different characteristic groups. The question on sexual identity helps us to understand the activity levels, views and perceptions of LGBT+ young people towards PE and sport. We have received advice from experts that this is an appropriate question to ask secondary aged children. However, we appreciate your school may not want to ask this question so provide an opt-out of this question in the registration process.

Together, this personal data helps us to understand the diversity of the people that respond to the questions in the survey. It will help us improve our work in the future and enable us to understand the activity levels, views and perspectives of young people from different characteristic groups. We will not ask for their name.

What happens to information collected?
All student responses are confidential. All responses will be compiled to produce a ‘School Insight Report’ for your school. Your school responses will also contribute to a county and national picture but no individuals or schools will be identified.

Data protection, consent, research purpose and ethics

Please read the research information sheet for full information about the research process for the long and/or short survey for the Girls Active Survey. This includes information on data protection, research purposes, ethics and informing parents/guardians about the research.

NEXT STEPS

  1. REGISTER by 25 May

Please complete this short registration providing your school survey preferences to enable the Youth Sport Trust to set the survey up for your school.

  1. Inform parents/guardians

Once you’ve registered, ensure to add the deadline date to the parts of Parent/Guardian Information Letter and (highlighted in yellow) before sending out. There is a version of this letter for both the short and long survey and these are labelled accordingly in the downloads. Please also remove the mention of ‘sexuality’ (highlighted in yellow) if you have chosen not to have this question asked to your Secondary aged students.

The deadline date that you add should be the day that you plan to complete the survey (between 1 and 30 June) and at least two weeks away. Please allow parents/guardians at least two weeks ahead of the deadline to consider their option to ‘opt out’ their young person from the research.

Please also send out the ‘‘Parental Information Video’ if desired to all parents and guardians of the young people who will be involved in the research.

  1. 01 June you will receive your schools’ survey link with instructions on administering the survey to students. The survey closes on 30 June. Please ensure that any young people whose parents/guardians have opted them out of the research do not complete the survey.

Please show the Girls Active Pre-Survey Video to the young people completing the survey ahead of them starting the survey.

No one has to take part in the research if they do not feel comfortable doing so. In situations where either a parent or young person has decided not to participate, please provide the young person with another activity to do during the research time. We ask for a teacher to be present during the time the young people are completing the survey in case young people have any questions.

  1. Week commencing 03 July schools will receive their School Insight Report.

If you have any further questions please get in touch with us: [email protected].

It allowed us to see the true view of the students. Quite often some students will just say I don't like PE - it gave them a voice and they liked that it was anonymous. It has been great to use as feedback as how we are going to close the gap between male and female participation and increased ability. They are much more likely to become better if they enjoy taking part.

Teacher
Teacher