Table 2.

Factors influencing adolescent girls’ participation in physical activity (PA).

Socioecological Model Level	Theme and Subtheme	Demonstrating Quote
Intrapersonal	Fear of Judgement
	Lack of confidence in skills	Even if everyone thought you were good at [sport] you wouldn’t think you were good at it … you could feel like people are laughing at you (P15, FG3, perceived inactive).
	Comparison with others	You want to see [others] are skinnier than you… Others are better… you might feel like you are too old compared to the others (P32, FG5, perceived inactive).
	Being alone	People feel less insecure when they are with their friends, they feel more insecure if they are alone and people are staring at them (P5, FG2, perceived active).
	Pressure to look good	In PE you get loads of pressure when you do it in school… you always feel under pressure because you have some of the skilled people watching you [doing PE] and you need to be your best at everything and you can’t screw up (P27, FG4, perceived inactive).
	Body Image	I know girls who dropped out of sport because they don’t want to look all muscly… Imagine going home with a bright red face, sweat rolling off you and everything (P43, FG8, perceived inactive ).
	Changing priorities
	Make-up instead of sport	It feels like girls are not meant to do exercise… rather exercise with their fingers doing their makeup (P3, FG1, perceived inactive).
	Academic pressure	They say during the [state exams] to “keep up your sports, keep up your sports” but then when you come into school they are like “study, study”, (P34, FG6, perceived active).
Interpersonal	Changing social pressures
	Social influence	[PA] kind of changes by your age, you want to do whatever your friends are doing so you stop whatever [PA] you were doing (P20, FG4, perceived inactive).
	Support from others
	Accountability	Researcher: What would help you to be more active? If you feel like you are getting support and you’re getting pushed and someone is motivating you to do it. A group chat with all your mates [would be helpful] so you could say like “I’m going to the gym”, like help me on this so I can get better at it (P36, FG7, perceived inactive).
	Peer support	On your own I don’t think you would be doing [PA] as much as if you were with your friends, you’d be more motivated with your friends because they are doing it too (P3, FG1, perceived inactive).
Organizational	Delivery of PE
	Lack of autonomy	Some people just aren’t into running and they are getting forced to go out and do that when they would rather be in school doing team sports or something. I just think it shouldn’t be compulsory to do certain things (P34, FG6, perceived active).
	Not delivered in a “fun” way	It’s the same stuff all the time… they say we can’t be bothered but we just want to do something active and fun instead of doing rubbish stuff (P45, FG8, perceived active)
	Timing	We only get an hour to do sports… we have to be changed, put up the nets and we only have half an hour because we still have to do a warm-up… on top of that you have homework and getting your books… so it’s kind of pointless to keep [PA] up (P29, FG5, perceived inactive).
	Priority within timetable	[We] should have more physical activity a week… most lads teams will get more training a week whereas in here it’s like once a week (P5, FG2, perceived active).
	Poor facilities	We don’t have really good facilities… our hall is half the size it’s meant to be so it’s hard to do actual sports because when you go to matches its completely different (P29, FG5, perceived inactive).
Multilevel	Gender inequalities
	Exclusion by boys	[The boys] never pass you and the girls are just like in the way for them (P23, FG4, perceived active).
	Less support for girls	If the PE teacher’s like “pick what game you want to play“ and the girls say hurling and the guys say soccer they are going to go with the guys… they don’t listen to what the girls have to say (P26, FG4, perceived inactive).
	Lack of PA opportunities for girls	[Schools] don’t really have girls’ stuff, they mostly have things to do with lads, they don’t encourage the girls to go and do football, they are doing it for the boys (P4, FG1, perceived active).
	Girls ‘sit out’	Researcher: Do most girls in your class take part in PE? No, no [girls] do [PE]. In our class there are 14 girls and like 5 of us that do [PE]. We all just sit in [the hall] at the sides and just refuse to do it (P45, FG8, perceived active).
	Need for female-only PA opportunities	Some people don’t like to be with other gender and most facilities aren’t enclosed (P5, FG2, perceived active).
	Professional career	[Girls doing sport] is frowned upon, even on TV, girls are paid less, and boys are paid more, there isn’t enough media coverage (P6, FG2, perceived active).
	Social stereotypes	Boys can ride a bike when they’re out, imagine one of us going around on a bike? Are you mad?... If a girl got seen driving a bike around here you would probably get robbed… it’s not normal [to ride a bike if you’re a girl]… if you were seen riding a bike at the age of 12 they’d come over and knock you off (P45, FG8, perceived active).

Quotes are assigned to participants on the basis of which focus group they were in and whether the girl perceived herself to be active or inactive (e.g., Participant 3 (P3), Focus Group 1 (FG1), inactive).