Using a Socioecological Approach to Examine Participation in Sport and Physical Activity Among Rural Adolescent Girls Meghan M. Casey Rochelle M. Eime Warren R. Payne Jack T. Harvey University of Ballarat, Mt. Helen, Victoria, Australia Adolescence is a critical time for developing lifelong healthy behaviors, including active lifestyles. Participation in sport and physical activity, however, declines during adolescence, and few studies have comprehensively identified why, particularly among rural girls. This article identifies a range of independent and interacting factors that influence sport and physical activity participation of rural adolescent girls. The socioecological model of health was used to guide four focus group discussions with Grade 7 girls (n = 34). The results showed that adolescent girls were posi- tively influenced when sports or physical activities were fun, when they involved being with friends, and when they were supported by families and teachers through role modeling and positive feedback. A range of intrapersonal and organizational factors affected perceived self-competence, particularly the coeducational nature of school physical education classes and peer teasing, which supported social comparisons of skill level. In promoting sport and physi- cal activity to rural adolescent girls, focus must be directed on developmentally appropriate activities that are fun, offering opportunities for single-sex classes, and generating cultural changes that encourage noncompetitive and self- referencing activities. Keywords: adolescents, female; exercise; health behavior; obesity; physical activity; qualitative methods, general; youth B eing overweight and obese are major health prob- lems for children, adolescents, and adults, and there is widespread concern that declining physical activity levels are contributing to this (Sparling, Owen, Lambert, & Haskell, 2000; Warburton, Nicol, & Bedin, 2006). For adolescent youth there are gener- ally three main opportunities for physical activity: physical education classes, organized sports, and unorganized or unstructured activities such as walk- ing. Participation in physical activity, however, appears to decline with age (Brady, 2004; Pate, Dowda, O’Neill, & Ward, 2007), and particularly during ado- lescence (Lubans, Sylva, & Morgan, 2007; Scheerder, Vanreusel, Taks, & Renson, 2005; Zick, Smith, Brown, Fan, & Kowaleski-Jones, 2007). In particular, adoles- cent girls seem to be less active than boys (Sanchez, et al., 2007), and have a higher sport-club withdrawal rate (Vilhjalmsson & Kristjansdottir, 2003). Adolescence is widely recognized as a difficult and stressful time for young people because of rapid changes in body image and self-esteem, as well as changes in their peer groups and school environment as they transition from primary to secondary school and later into tertiary education or the workforce (Eccles, Midgley, Wigfield, & Buchanan, 1993; Schulenberg, Maggs, & Hurrelmann, 1997). Some of these changes have been shown to negatively affect physical activity participation rates among adolescent girls (Garcia, Pender, Antonakos, & Ronis, 1998; Zick et al., 2007). Considering that adolescent physi- cal activity has been suggested to be positively asso- ciated with adult physical activity levels (Hallal, Victoria, Azevedo, & Wells, 2006; Perkins, Jacobs, 1 Authors’ Note: Drs. Caroline Symons and Melinda Craike are acknowledged for their contribution to the development of the interview questions and analysis themes. This study was funded by the Sport and Recreation Division of the Department of Plan- ning and Community Development, and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth). Qualitative Health Research Volume XX Number X Month XXXX xx-xx © 2009 The Author(s) 10.1177/1049732309338198 http://qhr.sagepub.com