Closing a chapter? A protocol for a longitudinal mixed methods study on retirement from elite sport.

Retirement from elite sport represents a major life transition for athletes and requires them to redefine their central life projects, identities, and perhaps even sources of meaning in life. Although an extensive body of literature has identified risk and protective factors in career termination, little is known about the more subjective processes and individual pathways of athletes as they establish their new relationship with work-life and sport. The planned longitudinal mixed methods study follows Swiss elite athletes' transition with a focus on understanding (1) the relationship between psychological resources, life situations at the end of the sports career, and the retirement process; (2) how athletes' post-retirement vocational careers interact with their subjective careers and sense of meaningful work; (3) how athletes reconstruct their identities and relationship with sport over time; and (4) how gender shapes athletes' pathways and reorientation of their life design.Using a person-oriented approach combined with narrative inquiry, we expect to identify specific types and stories which demonstrate individual differences in career and personal development throughout the transitional period, an understanding of which can be targeted towards support programmes for retiring elite athletes. As the study centralises dimensions of positive psychological functioning (meaning and purpose in life/sport/work, resilience, life satisfaction), it complements previous studies focused on psychological distress and provides much needed knowledge that can be used to foster well-being in athletic retirement. Collaborating with the Swiss Olympic Association helps to ensure that the research findings will be disseminated to relevant end-users and used towards developing socially sustainable elite sport for the future generations

‘School, family and then hockey!’ Coaches’ views on dual career in ice hockey

Despite the extensive research into coaches’ roles in supporting athletic development and motivation for sport, few studies have examined coaches’ attitudes and practices towards athletes’ dual careers. The present study extends European research into athletes’ dual careers by examining Finnish ice hockey coaches’ attitudes and practices surrounding players’ education. Ten male coaches aged 27–52 participated in semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed with an existential-narrative theoretical framework and with thematic and structural narrative analysis. Three composite vignettes were created entitled ‘supporting athletic development and players in reaching their own goals’, ‘enjoyment and physically active lifestyle’ and ‘developing good persons’. The analysis revealed that although all coaches embraced the official rhetoric where school is a priority over ice hockey, most of them had few practical examples of how this view had informed their coaching practice. It is concluded that young players may be easily lured into dreams of professionalism, whereas coaches’ dominant narrative of education as a back-up may be ineffective to spark athletes’ interest and engagement with education. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017

Athlete Lifestyle Support of Elite Youth Cricketers: An Ethnography of Player Concerns Within a National Talent Development Program

The 15-month ethnography reported here investigated the culturally and contextually relevant lifestyle concerns for which national-level youth cricketers seek support and the personal meanings ascribed to them. Players discussed lifestyle challenges and support, with five themes emerging: (a) players appreciating lifestyle support, (b) adapting to the new environment, (c) managing competing demands, (d) educational choices and professional contracts, and (e) identity negotiation in critical moments. The challenges impacted players' sense of self, well-being, and ultimately performance. The findings suggest lifestyle practitioners should support players through counseling approaches, strong player relationships, and environment immersion with a view to impacting performance. 2017 © Association for Applied Sport Psycholog

An Exploration of the Experiences of Elite Youth Footballers: The Impact of Organisational Culture

The present study explored how the organisational cultural experiences of elite youth footballers shaped their identity development and behaviour. The first author occupied the position of sport psychology practitioner-researcher within one professional football club over a 3-year duration. Traditional ethnographic research methods were employed, including; observations, field notes, reflections, and informal interviews. A Cultural Sport Psychology (CSP) perspective on identity as a social construction, and research on the cultural characteristics of professional football were used as frameworks to make sense of the data. Despite the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) in 2012, the traditional masculine culture of professional football dominated the studied club. Creative non-fiction vignettes revealed that youth players were encouraged to develop their self-stories focused on a single-minded dedication to professional football. The limited identity-related resources offered at both club, and cultural level is detrimental for players in terms of their well-being, and long term psychological development. From the results of this study, we suggest that future sports psychology practice within professional football may best be delivered at an organisational level. However, in order for a sport psychologist to be effective in this role they must develop an understanding of the sub-cultural features and characteristics of the organisation. In line with this, there would be great value in introducing a focus on organisational culture within sport psychology professional training and education routes

Perspectives on meaning in qualitative research

A characterising trait of qualitative research, as opposed to quantitative research, is its assumed focus on meaning. For example, Smith and Sparkes (2016, p. 2) suggested that “To interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them, qualitative researchers draw on a variety of empirical materials”. Although there might be an intuitive understanding of what “meaning” means, different traditions of qualitative research have unique ways of conceptualising where meaning is located and how it might best be studied. In this presentation, we will explore three qualitative traditions – phenomenology, narrative inquiry and cultural analysis – to explicate these different assumptions and how they influence the qualitative research process. Firstly, we will focus on phenomenological approaches to qualitative research which often emphasise the lived, pre-verbal experience of meaning before it is crystallised into words. From this perspective, the challenge for the qualitative research is to help the participants to explicate meanings of their experience through careful questioning. Secondly, we explore narrative approaches that consider meaning as created through storytelling and co-constructed with the researcher with particular audiences in mind. From this perspective, meaning is personal, but constructed from the cultural building blocks of example stories that are available to the storyteller. Finally, in cultural analysis, the focus is not on personal meaning, but rather the culturally shared webs of significance that make meaningful actions possible for cultural insiders. We conclude that explicating the types of assumptions that researchers draw on in the study of meaning can enhance the quality of qualitative research, and that the diverse perspectives often lead to complementary, enriching understandings of meaning in the world of sport and physical culture

Understanding youth athletes' life designing processes through dream day narratives

A number of studies have investigated career pathways in elite sport with retrospective designs, but few studies have explored how youth elite athletes construct narratives about their future lives and how their dreams and hopes relate to their careers in sport and other life contexts. We drew on career construction theory to understand youth elite athletes' dreams for the future and prominent life themes. Seventeen Finnish youth elite athletes (7 men, 10 women) in the first year of upper secondary sport school participated in the study. They were asked to make visual representations of their “dream days”, and these were used as aids for reflection in low-structured interviews where participants were invited to tell a story about the best possible day sometime in the future. The data were analysed using thematic and structural narrative analysis. We identified three types of dream days: a day on holiday, focused on relaxation, having a good time with friends, and recreational activities; a day of peak athletic performance describing winning a major competition; and a regular day involving school or work, athletic training and time with family. We concluded that the short future timespan and a low number of sporting dream days might indicate overload and lack of time for reflection. The implications for career interventions with talented adolescents are discussed.peerReviewe

Developing narrative identities in youth pre-elite sport : bridging the present and the future

Narrative research has contributed to understandings of athletic identity as an evolving story of the self that is creatively put together by the agentic individual but necessarily dependent on broader narratives within which we all live our lives. However, most studies in sport have focused on retrospective ‘big stories’ of athletes’ lives, rather than on-going, future-oriented identity construction through storytelling. In this study, we explored Finnish pre-elite athletes’ emerging stories of the self to understand the processes associated with the narrative selection and the resources they tap into in making sport meaningful to them. Nine women and eight men aged 17–18 were invited to create a visual representation of themselves as athletes and discuss them in conversational interviews. In the narrative analysis, we identified three storylines, ‘the high-performance athlete’, ‘the performance, relational and fun athlete’ and ‘the lifestyle athlete’ and explored how stories were selected to construct a positive athletic identity and sustain motivation. We argue that the end point of the identity narratives was to establish a positive future perspective and hope in the face of adversities. The future-oriented narrative content signals a need for more diverse narrative methodologies in sport beyond retrospective approaches such as the life story interview, especially with younger participants.peerReviewe

Rethinking validity in qualitative sport and exercise psychology research: a realist perspective

Over the last two decades, the relativist approach has significantly shaped debates about the quality and rigour of qualitative research in sport and exercise psychology (SEP). In the absence of any published critiques of relativism in SEP, this paper problematises its central claims with a focus on the most recent contribution offered by Smith and McGannon (2018. Developing rigor in qualitative research: problems and opportunities within sport and exercise psychology. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 11, 101–121). Despite making valuable contributions to the advancement and acceptance of qualitative research, we argue that the relativist approach encounters numerous problems when attempting to reject the “anything goes” problem due to its fundamental ontological commitment to internal, multiple, mind-dependent realities. This paper then makes a constructive contribution to the field by offering an alternative position grounded in a realist understanding of validity. We first suggest that principles such as ontological plausibility, empirical adequacy and practical utility can re-orient both critical thinking and the use of practical techniques which can reduce threats to validity. Second, we suggest that Maxwell’s (1992. Understanding and validity in qualitative research. Harvard Educational Review, 62, 279–301) descriptive, interpretive and theoretical validity could be welcome concepts for qualitative researchers in SEP. The significance of this realist approach for researchers, reviewers and editors is discussed