Effects of a sport programme (Box'Tag®) on disadvantaged youth participants

There is evidence that appropriately structured sport programmes can help young people to build positive life skills while also improving their physical fitness and psychological well-being. Disadvantaged and marginalised young people have relatively low rates of participation in sport, and designing programmes that attract and retain them presents a major challenge. Some success has been reported for programmes involving boxing, but such programmes entail a high potential for injury. The present study assessed the effects of a modified, low-risk form of boxing, known as Box'Tag®, on disadvantaged 11–12-year-olds. Volunteer Grade 7 students (N = 51) participated in an eight-week programmes of two to three sessions per week. Using a matched-pair design to control for effects of gender and risk of social disengagement (at-risk/not-at-risk), participants were assigned to either the Box'Tag® intervention or a control condition, in the form of a largely non-physical social skills programmes called Rock and Wat...