Effectiveness of the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit: A scoping review

A scoping review was conducted to synthesize the literature examining impact of the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit (CFTC) on the physical activity (PA) of Canadian children. Specifically, we posed two research questions seeking evidence for: (1) equitable take-up (e.g., claiming, use) of the CFTC by Canadian families; and (2) effectiveness of the CFTC in promoting or facilitating PA or sport participation among Canadian children and adolescents. A search was conducted in May 2023 of five databases (e.g., Medline, Scopus) and hand searching using terms such as children, adolescents, physical activity, sport, tax credit or taxation. Documents were included if they were data-based studies, available in English or French, and related to the research questions. They were then coded for characteristics of the document, sample, data, behaviour, and findings. Of 318 possible documents, 7 documents revealing 26 findings were included after a full-article scan. Most of the documents were published and had a national scope. The most frequent source of data was from parental reports (62