Search results

Purpose – To discuss the history and relevance of audience research as it pertains to sport and physical culture and to demonstrate an approach to doing audience research.

Design/methodology/approach – A step-by-step overview of a study conducted by the authors is provided. The study examined ways that groups of young males in a Vancouver, Canada, high school interpreted images of masculinity in popular media, and ways these same youth performed masculinity in physical education classes. We reflect on how studying interpretations (using focus groups) and lived experiences (using participant observation and in-depth interviews) in an integrated fashion was helpful for understanding the role of media in the everyday lives of these youth. We also describe how the hegemony concept guided our data interpretation.

Findings – We highlight how, on the one hand, the young males were critical of media portrayals of hegemonic forms of masculinity and, on the other hand, how these same males attempted to conform to norms associated with hegemonic masculinity in physical education classes. We emphasise that our multi-method approach was essential in allowing us to detect the incongruity between youth ‘interpretations’ and ‘performances’.

Research limitations/implications – Limitations of audience research are discussed, and the epistemological underpinnings of our study are highlighted.

Originality/value – The need for audience research in physical cultural studies is emphasised. We suggest that researchers too often make claims about media impacts without actually talking to audiences, or looking at what audiences ‘do’ with information they glean from media.

To outline the experiential nature of hidden mental illnesses (or “invisible disabilities”) in sport and physical cultures. A sociological account is given of how people living with a hidden mental illness or disorder manage their identities in physical culture.

The chapter begins by addressing the role of social stigma as a barrier to sport and exercise participation for young people living with hidden mental illnesses. From there, and venturing beyond typical sociological tropes about social stigma, the chapter presents ethnographic findings from a study of people living with epilepsy and their tactical uses of a range of physical cultures to craft their selves in innovative ways.

People living with so-called simple or nonmajor “hidden/invisible” disabilities are often overlooked as a differential needs population with sport and health zones. The people in this study identify how the desire to be mobile, self-expressive, and authentic through the physical activity pursuits is important yet unavailable to them in a wide range of sport, leisure, and health fields because of the ways in which these places privilege particular types of brain and bodies. Through their own self-styled physical cultural involvements, however, these people challenge the dominance of sport-based model of health promotion in broader culture and disrupt dominant ideological frames that privilege the normative, rational, calculating, and predictable brain in athletic zones.

The importance of identifying persons who may not participate in sport and physical culture due to perceived and felt stigma is highlighted. In addition, developing creative strategies and programs for these populations is underscored.

Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to introduce visual methods and, more specifically, arts-based forms of visual methods, as an innovative and emerging research approach within the study of sport and physical culture. The chapter examines the use of art and aesthetics as research data and as a representation issue. It draws upon the case of a research-based arts exhibition to represent and communicate research on bodies.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter details an international collaborative research project exploring the impact of health policies and their imperatives on schools in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The research formed the focus of an arts-based exhibition involving artists’ interpretations of the authors’ research findings. The chapter addresses salient epistemological and ontological issues of ‘representation’ and ‘interpretation’ in visual methods.

Findings – The chapter reveals how the use of arts-based approaches to research do not simply ‘represent’ research, but are constructive in the generation of new insights and forms of knowledge.

Research limitations/implications – The challenges of using arts-based and visual approaches to research are highlighted, particularly in terms of issues of knowledge interpretation. The ways in which these methods allow for lines of sight into life that written texts do not are highlighted.

Originality/value – The chapter provides an introduction to the use of arts-based visual methods in sport and physical culture research. Rather than focusing on visual methods solely as an approach to the collection of data, the chapter extends the discussion around visual methodology to include its use as a form of interpretation that generates and translates knowledge from a new perspective.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to outline what narrative inquiry entails, why it is relevant for the study of sport and physical culture and how researchers might engage in its analytical methods.

Design/methodology/approach – Narrative inquiry as an approach, not simply a method, is delineated in this chapter. The design of a project is outlined. Three types of narrative analysis – holistic-content, holistic-form and meta-autoethnography – are the focus. The chapter also attends to the benefits of using multiple forms of analysis and representation as part of engaging with the methodology of crystallisation.

Findings – Key findings of narrative research on sport and physical culture are illuminated throughout.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of narrative analysis are highlighted, including how in many narrative studies the interactional dynamics of storytelling are often neglected.

Originality/value – The chapter provides a succinct introduction to why narratives matter, how narrative analysis as a craft might be practised and what theoretical assumptions underpin it. The authors also highlight innovative practices for deepening understandings of sport and physical culture. These include time-lining, mobile interviewing, analytical bracketing, crystallisation, meta-autoethnography and analysis as movement of thought.

Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to introduce interviewing as an exploratory research approach for understanding the lived experiences of individuals and groups in sports and physical cultural contexts. The author draws on her own research with snowboarders to illustrate some of the standard and unique issues related to conducting interviews as part of ethnographic fieldwork.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter begins with a brief history of the development of qualitative interviews and their various uses in sport studies. The author then provides a description of her use of ‘postmodern-inspired’ interviews as part of a broader ethnographic study of snowboarding culture. Following this, she adopts an alternative representational approach to illustrate some of the practical, ethical, political and embodied issues for reflexive researchers working in the critical paradigm and conducting interviews in sport and physical cultural fields.

Findings – The chapter illustrates the value of a postmodern approach to interviewing that recognises the interview as more than textual, and gives greater consideration to the affective, sensuous, relational, embodied and socio-spatial dimensions of each interview event.

Research limitations/implications – The chapter examines the strengths and limitations of qualitative interviewing, with particular attention to the potential and perils of interviewing in the sports field.

Originality/value – The chapter provides a succinct introduction to the use of interviewing in sport and physical culture, and makes an innovative contribution by focusing on ethnographic interviews.

Purpose – To introduce autoethnography as an innovative research approach within sport and physical culture, and consider its key tenets, strengths and weaknesses. For illustrative purposes, the chapter draws upon two specific autoethnographic research projects on distance running – one collaborative and one solo.

Design/methodology/approach – The design of the two projects is delineated, including methods of data collection and analysis: tape-recorded field and ‘head’ notes, personal and analytic logs, phenomenological, thematic and narrative data analysis. Issues of representation are addressed and the chapter explores salient, but often-overlooked, ethical considerations in undertaking autoethnographic research.

Findings – Key findings of two research projects are presented, cohering around issues of identity construction and identity work, together with lived body and sensory experiences of distance running.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of using an autoethnographic approach are discussed, including in relation to fulfilling traditional, positivistic judgment criteria such as validity, reliability and generalisability; more appropriate criteria are proposed, particularly in relation to evocative autoethnographies. Novel forms of the genre: collaborative autoethnography and autophenomenography, are suggested as future directions for autoethnographic research in SPC.

Originality/value – The chapter provides a succinct introduction to the use of autoethnography in sport and physical culture, for those unfamiliar with the genre. The author also suggests an innovative variation – autophenomenography.