¶ … Viability of Community Sports Programs
There has been raging debate on whether or not sports projects are wise municipal investments. Experts have raised concern that although such programs may appear very attractive at face value, they end up delivering very little returns in the long-term owing to the incremental nature of the associated hidden costs. This has prompted researchers to shift from studying the benefits of community sport projects as tools of investment to analyzing how the benefits of such investment compare with the costs. The research questions below have been derived from multiple studies seeking to establish the economic impact of community sporting programs on the overall economy by comparing the real costs and benefits of the same.
RQ1: Do sporting projects help in tackling the problem of youth crimes?
In this case, we can define sports projects, the independent variable, in terms of the proportion of the budget set aside for sporting activities by a municipality, city, or state. Youth crimes, the dependent variable, on the other hand, can be defined in terms of the proportion of criminal activities in a city or state committed by persons under the age of 35. Both variables are quantitative, continuous, interval variables (Black, 2011). For instance, we can measure the budgetary allocation to sporting activities using such values as -- less than 1/4 of the total budget, between 1/4 and 1/2, between 1/2 and ae, and more than ae. Moreover, we could measure the level of youth crime in terms of 'less than 1/4 of the total criminal cases reported', 'between 1/4 and 1/2 of total criminal cases' and so on.
RQ2: Do sporting activities have an impact on society's welfare?
Engagement in sporting activities is the...
Welfare, on the other hand, can be defined in terms of the level of security, the city's reputation, the availability of social amenities and so on. We could, for instance, compare the reputations (in terms of security) of several cities with different levels of engagement in sporting activities, and then provide a 'yes' or 'no' response based on our observations, in which case we will have measured the welfare variable as a categorical, dichotomous variable (Huck, 2010; Black, 2011).
RQ3: How does engagement in sports projects impact on drug use and abuse among the youth?
In this case, we can define 'drug use and abuse' (the dependent variable) in terms of the annual rates of drug use by persons under the age of 35 within a city, municipality, or state, in which case we would measure it as an i) continuous variable, given that it is possible to have a rate of 35.5%, and ii) a quasi-interval variable measured by attaching numerical value to ten data categories ranging from 0-10% to 90%-100% prevalence rate.
RQ4: How does engagement in community sports predict an individual's overall well-being?
Engagement in community sports can be defined in terms of the amount of time a person spends taking part in sporting activities, say football, rugby, swimming, basketball, and so on; whereas social well-being can be defined in terms of how people perceive their overall mental and physical health. Responses for the 'engagement in community sports' variable could be given in terms of hours, whereas those for the 'perception well-being' variable could range from 'very highly' to 'very low'. This means that the independent variable would be measured…
