Surveillance of Youth Sports Participation in the United States: Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions.

Purpose: National surveillance of behaviors, including physical activity and sport can provide insight with respect to population-level trends. The purpose of this investigation was to characterize the existing sources of surveillance for organized youth sport participation in the United States and highlight knowledge gaps.

Methods: We identified nationally representative and free publicly available surveillance data from 2012 to 2022 and report the prevalence of sport participation, the number of sports in which youth participated, and in which specific sports youth participated overall, and by demographic characteristics.

Results: Eight surveillance systems met our inclusion criteria. Across systems, estimates ranged from 39.6% to 81.5% of youth participating in any organized sport, with 21.8% to 30.4% of youth participating in one sport. The most common sports were basketball and soccer. Limited information with respect to characteristics of sport participation was collected across systems.

Conclusions: Multiple data sources regarding overall organized youth sport participation are available; there is little information further characterizing this participation (eg, setting, volume, specialization), limiting ability to examine important aspects related to public health. Comprehensive, on-going, national surveillance of multiple youth sport domains is needed in the United States to inform sport-promoting policy and ensure equitable provision of quality sport experiences.