Australian sport and physical activity behaviours pre, during and post-COVID-19

BMC Public Health

Table 4 Patterns of participation in RPA¹ 2019–2022: by type of RPA and region²

Type of RPA	Any RPA			Club sport			Other RPA
Region	Metro	Non-metro		Metro	Non-metro		Metro	Non-metro
Category	%	%	p-value³	%	%	p-value³	%	%	p-value³
Did not play in 2019	0.8	0.0	0.058	13.3	11.6	0.545	14.6	18.3	0.371
Dropped out 2020 no return 2021	2.2	1.9		11.4	13.0		1.8	1.0
Dropped out 2020, returned 2021	11.9	16.9		46.8	49.4		3.8	2.9
Dropped out 2021	4.2	4.8		4.6	3.1		10.4	9.9
Continued 2019–2021	80.8	76.4		23.9	22.9		69.4	68.0
N	720	415		720	415		720	415

¹ Recreational Physical Activity
² Regions are defined on the basis of residential postcode. The Metropolitan region comprises the Greater Capital City Statistical Area of each Australian state and territory (Ref 22 in previous paper). The Non-metropolitan region comprises the remainder of Australia. Three cases had missing postcodes
³ Chi-square test comparing patterns of participation between regions for each type of RPA. Points of greatest difference between the most different pair of profiles are indicated by the use of boldface type for the higher of each pair of percentages

ISSN: 1471-2458