The Norwegian Sports Membership Database: coverage, biases and research potential

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Abstract
Aims To describe the Norwegian Sports Membership Database (NSMD), assess its coverage and develop definitions of sports participation for research purposes. Methods We validated the coverage of NSMD, a database capturing individual-level sports memberships among persons 10 to 70 years of age between 2015 and 2024, by comparing yearly membership counts with official reports from The Norwegian Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF). We defined three operational thresholds for active membership: wide (≥ 1 day), intermediate (≥ 90 days), and strict (≥ 1 season or paid licence). Result Between 2015 and 2024, NSMD contained 2,850,802 memberships representing 1,396,467 unique individuals (49%) across 55 sports federations and 279 disciplines. Football accounted for 24% of memberships, handball for 11%, and skiing for 7%. Database coverage was low in 2015, capturing less than 20% of expected memberships, but improved substantially over time and exceeded 66% in 2019. The coverage further exceeded 89% from 2021. Of all recorded memberships, 99% met the wide definition criteria, 91% met the intermediate definition, and 80% met the strict definition. Conclusion The coverage of the NSMD is high in recent years, representing a level of completeness that permits meaningful population-level analyses from 2019, although with large variations between sports. Linking sports data with health and sociodemographic outcomes provides a potentially large opportunity for population-based research on sports participation and health across the lifespan.

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