Sport Participation and Community Capacity Building in Disadvantaged Urban Communities

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between sport and community by examining the role played by sports participation in community engagement and community capacity building in disadvantaged urban communities. From a conceptual standpoint, the study is based on the sociological theory of the community and Community Capacity Building (CCB) theory, which provide overviews of the concept of community and community capacity and its characteristics. Four disadvantaged urban communities were investigated. Two of these communities had sports programs, while the other two did not. The online questionnaire methodology was adopted to assess the socio-demographic characteristics and community engagement of the participants (knowledge of programs and participation in community activities), and subsequently, an analysis of the online social media narratives of the community members themselves was developed to measure the characteristics of their community capacity building. We found that community engagement and community capacity values were higher in the communities with sports programs. These findings are promising and suggest that approaches based on sports participation development could be fruitful, particularly in disadvantaged communities.