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A New Era in Focus Group ResearchOutsiders on the Inside: Focus Group Research with Elite Youth Footballers

A New Era in Focus Group Research: Outsiders on the Inside: Focus Group Research with Elite Youth... [Conducting research with participants in closed social worlds is notoriously difficult and many researchers refrain from even attempting to invest their time in such work. This is particularly the case in contexts such as professional football (soccer), which has for many years been characterized by a traditionally close-knit, male-dominated subculture characterized by rather unequal power relations between managers and coaches and players, and in which there is a deeply institutionalized suspicion of ‘outsiders’. Notwithstanding these difficulties, in this chapter we discuss our successful experience of undertaking focus groups on education and welfare with 303 young footballers (16–18 years old) who attended 21 professional football Academies and Centres of Excellence in England and Wales in 2009. We focus on the practical lessons we learnt, and the methodological difficulties we encountered, as a result of the diverse scenarios with which we had to deal once we had been granted permission to undertake research in clubs. Consideration will be given to the ways in which we negotiated access with key stakeholders, the ways in which we sought to reassure players of the anonymity of their responses, and the serious methodological challenges we experienced when conducting focus groups in diverse settings in clubs that were accessible by other club staff.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A New Era in Focus Group ResearchOutsiders on the Inside: Focus Group Research with Elite Youth Footballers

Editors: Barbour, Rosaline S.; Morgan, David L.
Platts, Chris; Smith, Andy
Springer Journals — Jun 24, 2017
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17 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017. The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN
978-1-137-58613-1
Pages
17 –34
DOI
10.1057/978-1-137-58614-8_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Conducting research with participants in closed social worlds is notoriously difficult and many researchers refrain from even attempting to invest their time in such work. This is particularly the case in contexts such as professional football (soccer), which has for many years been characterized by a traditionally close-knit, male-dominated subculture characterized by rather unequal power relations between managers and coaches and players, and in which there is a deeply institutionalized suspicion of ‘outsiders’. Notwithstanding these difficulties, in this chapter we discuss our successful experience of undertaking focus groups on education and welfare with 303 young footballers (16–18 years old) who attended 21 professional football Academies and Centres of Excellence in England and Wales in 2009. We focus on the practical lessons we learnt, and the methodological difficulties we encountered, as a result of the diverse scenarios with which we had to deal once we had been granted permission to undertake research in clubs. Consideration will be given to the ways in which we negotiated access with key stakeholders, the ways in which we sought to reassure players of the anonymity of their responses, and the serious methodological challenges we experienced when conducting focus groups in diverse settings in clubs that were accessible by other club staff.]

Published: Jun 24, 2017

Keywords: Professional football; Power relations; Stakeholders

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