The Year 9 ‘strata' survey is one of KKP's longest standing, most successful and best known products. In 2004, the Company managed one of the largest ever surveys of young people and their sporting and arts participation, involving over 56,000 young people across all 43 local authorities in the Northwest of England.

Recognising the value of the Year 9 survey as a tool for both assessing the out-turn from development work at a particular point and identifying future direction, the North West Development Agency (NWDA) commissioned KKP to undertake the survey across the whole region. The Arts Council North West, Sport England North west region and Culture Northwest provided valuable project management input.

KKP managed the process of securing responses from 56,000 young people across over 700 secondary schools in the Northwest. In addition to assessing levels of participation, the survey addressed issues associated with awareness and attitudes to provision.

The data generated has been used by regional agencies to influence policy direction. This mostly focuses on addressing inequalities in participation - for example, girls are much less likely than boys to participate in sport and physical activity, whilst the reverse is true for arts and creative activities. Other areas of inequality include regional variation, low participation by young people from Asian communities and the influence of car ownership and familial involvement.

Results of Year 9 surveys are also driving local policy. Examples include:

• Halton - developed justification for new synthetic turf pitch in Runcorn area using survey awareness results.
• Cheshire - introduced targets for raising facility awareness for managers.
• Bury/Bolton/Salford - combined to offer free travel to targeted Year 9 pupils to encourage participation.
• Bury - targeted free swimming and promotion in the areas shown to have particularly high levels of poor and non swimmers.