Methods

Part 1:

We conducted 54 in-person surveys at various locations around Hartford from parents of children between the ages of 5-14.

In order to collect as representative of a sample of Hartford parents as possible (geographic and age range), we selected survey locations in the North End, the South End, and the West End.

Elementary Schools:
  • West Middle School – North End
  • Montessori School and Cyril Saint School – South End 
Other locations:
  • Capital Community College
  • Walmart on Flatbush Ave.
  • Central Baptist Church in Downtown 

(We went to each location multiple times)

Copy of Survey:

https://action-lab.org/youth-sports/files/2019/12/Official-Paper-Survey-YouthSports-2.pdf

The distribution of the ethnicities and education levels of the parents we surveyed:

The greatest reported level of education was some college, and Hispanic was the most common ethnicity we surveyed.

Part 2:

We launched an online version of our study that was posted on various Hartford Facebook pages and other social media sites to gather more data.

We received 59 responses to our online survey.

The online survey was posted on Active city’s website, so many of the respondents were already involved in sports. Keeping this in mind we analyzed this data separately from the in-person surveys we collected.

The greatest reported level of education was a Bachelor’s Degree or higher, and Hispanic was the most common ethnicity we surveyed.

Part 3:

The third part of our data collection consisted of calling schools to ask questions about their current sports offerings. Schools we called were:

  • West Middle School
  • Global Academy
  • Parkville Community School

We were interested to learn about the sports programs in school, so we did some investigative research. We did some online research and called a few schools. However, overall we were not very successful in getting enough information to draw conclusions.

Schools programs:

West Middle School: Has no sports offerings 

Global Academy: Has a volleyball, baseball, cross country, indoor track, football, and basketball team. There are about 20 kids on each team.

Parkville Community School: Has a soccer team in the fall and a basketball team in the spring.