Suchergebnisse

Ensuring community clubs implement centrally developed sports policy is a challenge for most sports. One hundred and eighty four (70% male, 68% aged 40 to 59 years) community Australian football club representatives (first-aid providers, administrators, parents, coaches, etc.) from across the country provided their perceptions of an Australian Football League-developed sports trainer policy and associated workforce training structure (jointly referred to hereafter as 'the policy') via an online survey. This article presents a qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions within the survey using the analytical lens of symbolic interactionism. Respondents generally supported the intent of the policy and identified many potential benefits of the policy, if adopted. They also provided insight into the organization and operation of community sports clubs and stressed that the volunteer intensive nature of community sport needs to be accommodated in the policy to enhance the likelihood of community-level acceptance and implementation. Successful community club implementation of this type of centrally developed micro-level sport policy requires that policy-makers understand and address the implementation context-related perspectives raised in this study.

This study used both qualitative and quantitative analyses to discern whether the narratives, metaphors, framing devices, and production practices in televised international athletic events differed by the race, ethnicity, or nationality of athletes. About 340 hours of videotapes of 7 televised international athletic events were used to study key aspects of production: (a) commentator descriptions of 161 athletes in 31 competitions, (b) 30 personal interviews drawn from 3 of the events under study, and (c) 5 opening and closing segments that commonly unify themes and metaphors and that produce the look of an event. Six major findings include the following: (a) efforts were made to provide fair treatment of athletes, (b) the treatment of race and ethnicity varied across productions, (c) little evidence of negative representations of Black athletes, (d) representations of Asian athletes drew on cultural stereotypes, (e) representations of Latino-Hispanic athletes were mixed, and (f) nationalistic bias was evident.