Three Ethical Issues in Narrative Research of Women Coaches’ Lifelong Learning

It is important to reflect upon ethical issues in conducting narrative research beyond what may be considered in Research Ethics Board applications. Ethical issues were identified in a dissertation study that utilized a narrative research approach to explore the process of lifelong learning for five women coaches. Using journal reflections and participant and researcher conversations, three ethical issues are discussed. These issues arose during the process of collecting narratives from participants and in creating narrative analyses of the data. While there exists a broad range of views on narratives, all narrative researchers can benefit from reflecting on ethical issues within their researc

The Lived Experience of a Doctoral Student: The Process of Learning and Becoming

The PhD experience is often a transition from student to future faculty member, which involves considerable learning and development (Glaze, 2002; Hockey, 2004). Using a lifelong learning perspective (Jarvis, 2009), the purpose of this article is to explore, through a reflective self-study, my process of learning throughout the PhD degree. In this qualitative self-study, I kept a detailed personal, professional, and academic reflective journal over four years and used the journal entries as data to explore the process of learning. The results reveal my ‘process of becoming’, moving from a beginner PhD student to an aspiring professor and new mother. The results are discussed in light of how I learned during the four years of the PhD, and how my lifetime of previous experiences influenced the learning that occurred

Insights on the Process of Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis in a Sport Coaching Research Project

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is a qualitative research methodology used to understand participants’ subjective realities through personal interpretations of their lived experiences and the meanings they attach to these experiences (Smith, 2011). IPA has been used predominantly in health psychology, with rising interest within the field of sport psychology and coaching. This article seeks to describe insights about the processes of IPA by a research team using the methodological approach for the first time. These experiences are shared against the backdrop of research exploring the lived experiences of Masters athletes within the context of coached competitive swim programs. We describe how the multiple facets of IPA influence the refinement of the research question, the planning and implementation of data collection, and data analysis and interpretation. We elaborate on our perceptions of the complexities of IPA and make recommendations for how future research teams might smoothly navigate the rigorous research process to yield rich in-depth data and interpretations

Exploring the Context of Coached Masters Swim Programs: A Narrative Approach

Knowing the psychosocial themes in a specific sport context allows us to understand athletes’ experiences and informs approaches of coaches (Côté et al., 1995) and sport programmers (Danish et al., 2005). Few qualitative studies focus on psychosocial conditions of adult athletes in coached sport settings. The purpose of this study was to capture important psychosocial themes from the perspective of Masters swimmers involved in day-to-day coached swimming environments. Data were collected using semi-structured open-ended interviews with 10 competitive swimmers (5 male, 5 female; M age = 53 years; range: 45-65 years). Analyses revealed four over-arching themes that represented athletes’ a) motives for swimming, b) perspectives on competition, c) experiences specific to being a Masters swimmer, and d) perspectives on being coached. Using a qualitative narrative approach (Denison, 2011), we developed three narrative profiles to depict how our Masters swimmers had different experiences relating to these themes. Discussion focuses on how swimmers’ understanding of the four over-arching themes depends on their profile