The state of youth sport research: A systematic review of reviews to identify research themes, trends, gaps, and future directions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Youth sport is a dynamic and multifaceted field, encompassing diverse topics such as participation, retention, coaching, talent development, mental health, and wellbeing. While numerous systematic reviews have synthesised evidence on specific aspects of youth sport, the growing volume of these reviews has created a fragmented knowledge base. A systematic review of reviews is needed to consolidate existing evidence, identify overarching patterns, and highlight gaps in knowledge. This approach provides a comprehensive, high-level synthesis that can guide national sport policy, improve practice, and determine future research priorities. This is particularly important in youth sport, where evidence-based interventions can have profound impacts on young people’s physical health, mental wellbeing, and lifelong engagement in sport and physical activity. By streamlining and evaluating the current evidence landscape, this review will offer clear, consolidated guidance for coaches, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working to optimise youth sport environments and outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.085 | 0.282 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.013 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.030 | 0.034 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".