The National Survey for Wales is an annual survey conducted across Wales, involving around twelve thousand people each year. The survey covers a whole range of topics, such as healthcare, schools, wellbeing or people’s attitudes to public services and the results of the survey are used by the Welsh Government with the aim of improving policy and decision making.
One of the key sections of the report is the Sport and Active Lifestyles Survey, which is administered by Sport Wales, the organisation responsible for developing sport and physical activity in Wales. It aims to capture current levels of participation in sport and physical activity across Wales as well as assessing levels of demand.
Read our report below:
Run Wales and Welsh Athletics were once again thrilled to see Running, Jogging and Athletics retain the top spot as the biggest participation physical activity in Wales. This year the survey reported the participation of 293,000 adults, encouragingly an increase of 10,000 from the previous cycle in 2021/2022 and nearly 200,000 more than the next on sport! Currently, this equates to more than ten percent of the population of Wales. This is along with a further 33 thousand adults with a demand to get into running, jogging or athletics.
The encouraging statistics reflect the hard work put in by our Social Running Groups, runners and volunteers as we look to support as many people as possible to experience the joy of social running.
‘We have seen running/athletics consistently coming top of the participation figures across multiple Welsh surveys over the past few years. We have had a focused effort through our Run Wales social running programme to create more opportunities for everyone to start their running journey. The numbers published this week are hugely impressive, but we know there is more to come. Our clubs and groups along with partners like parkrun and the The Daily Mile share our ambition to use the power of running to improve the physical and mental health of the Nation.
Over 30,000 adults have highlighted a desire to do more running, our challenge is now to create the capacity and the opportunities to enable these individuals to become part of the running family of Wales.’
James Williams, CEO of Welsh Athletics
You can access the full copy of the report: HERE