Sport, resilience and social inclusion: developing an evaluation rubric through experience

Abstract

Introduction: Physical activity and sport are valuable resources for the promotion of social inclusion, especially in highly vulnerable groups such as young people. The engagement of youth in sport programmes promotes resilience. It facilitates the learning of life skills, fostering social bonds and affection, awareness of limits and the importance of challenging oneself as a way to achieve real expectations, while facilitating personal wellbeing through emotional strength. Promoting resilience through sport for social inclusion must be a deliberate process, requiring tools to assess the effects of the process. Objective: This article aims to create a rubric-based tool to assess the promotion of resilience in a sports environment with the goal of strengthening social inclusion. Material and Methods: It is based on the following methodology: 1) a review of existing works to assess resilience in a context of social and sports risk; 2) the creation of the tool in a rubric-based structure; 3) review and improvement of the instrument by a group of experts; 4) validation of the content by a group of experts in the field; 5) application the instrument in a pilot group; 6) final improvements to the instrument following suggestions from professionals and their evaluation. Results and Discussion: The result has been the construction and validation of a rubric composed of six dimensions and four levels of achievement. Validity and reliability analyses through expert judgement and exploratory factorial analysis demonstrate the instrument’s usefulness for assessing the effects of sport in promoting resilience in contexts of social vulnerability. Conclusions: The instrument presented has clear applicability value and responds to a need for community intervention, but it must take into account its limitations as well as further research on resilience assessment in these contexts for its universal replicability. The instrument and the guidelines derived from its application are based on the Sport!Op! project (Opportunities for the inclusion of vulnerable young people through sport).