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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 informationFor the third edition (February 2025), the data file was resupplied, with an updated County Sports Partnership variable (CSP_2025) 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
A full list of all sports and physical activities can be found in the Active Lives Technical Summary.
Terminology used is generally based on DDI controlled vocabularies: Time Method, Analysis Unit, Sampling Procedure and Mode of Collection, available at CESSDA Vocabulary Service.
Methodology
Data collection period
01/11/2015 - 01/11/2016
Country
England
Time dimension
Repeated cross-sectional study
Analysis unit
Individuals
National
Universe
Individuals aged 14+ living in England during 2015-2016.
Sampling procedure
Multi-stage stratified random sample
Kind of data
Numeric
Data collection mode
Web-based interview
Postal survey
Access
Publisher
UK Data Service
Publication year
2017
Terms of data access
The Data Collection is available to UK Data Service registered users subject to the End User Licence Agreement.
Commercial use of the data requires approval from the data owner or their nominee. The UK Data Service will contact you.