Rationalising sports policies (1982)

The rationalisation of sports policies has been the object of much attention in the Council of Europe for some years. The great increase in sports participation in all the European countries since the sixties has put considerable new demands upon policy makers. Brian Rodgers took a step with the development of a series of measuring-instruments which made international comparison possible. In 1978 the Committee for the Development of Sport encouraged by George Walker took the obvious decision of setting up a cross-national research which was to guarantee an exact comparability of the results. Urbain Claeys worked out the Rodgers proposal and agreed to supervise the coordination of this comprehensive project. This summary report contains a brief description of the original design, operationalisation and realisation of the research, and a review of the main results it has produced so far.