John Hayton

Ali Bowes , Chris Brown , Terri Byers , David Cockayne , Ian Cooper, James Du , Andrea Geurin , Emily Jane Hayday , John W. Hayton , Claire Jenkin , James Andrew Kenyon , Niamh Kitching , Seth Kirby , Paul Kitchin , Geoffery Z. Kohe , Themistocles Kokolakakis , Ho Keat Leng , Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen , Eric W. MacIntosh, Hazel Maxwell , Anthony May , Katie Misener, Jimmy O’Gorman , Daniel Parnell , Keith D. Parry , Qi Peng, Daniel Plumley , Martin J. Power , Girish Ramchandani , Mike Rayner , Nicolas Scelles , Tracy Taylor , Tom Webb af and Mathieu Winand ah

This case provides a commentary of the key methodological procedures implemented to qualitatively explore consecutive volunteering across a series of major events showcasing competitive international hockey. Throughout, we attend to the central tenets of the research design, longitudinal field-based research, by describing the approaches taken to access, build, and maintain a growing sample of participants, while concurrently collecting and analyzing rich qualitative data from this peer group. In doing this, we provide a commentary of the decision-making processes underpinning such strategies, and present an academic rationale for their selection. Central to this case study is a focus upon the implementation of what is a predominantly field-based research project. Of principal concern within this case study is therefore the reporting of the lived experience of the researcher "in the field" as he sought to recruit participants to the study, and subsequently elicit rich qualitative data from them. Communicated within such accounts are the thought processes and problem-solving strategies of the field-based researcher as he sought to navigate the novel social milieu that he had immersed himself within to glean an in-depth insight into the world of the hockey event-volunteer. In addition, we discuss the steps that we took to enhance the quality and rigor of the findings alongside the theoretical basis for doing so.

Dave’s story is an important narrative that explores how caring for athletes may reflexively influence the personal and social lives of coaches. The narrative begins by revealing some of the ways that coaches may care for athletes and their wider well-being. For example, Dave uses basketball as a vehicle to support athletes’ education. He also provides pastoral care to athletes with challenging family and social circumstances. This ‘labour’ can, however, be time consuming and emotionally intensive. Accordingly, caring for athletes can have significant negative consequences for coaches’ own personal and social lives. Readers may recognise Dave’s struggles to balance caring for athletes and a passion for sport with his family commitments. To aid readers in such positions, Dave’s story is analysed with reference to sociological literature on emotional labour and psychological literature on burnout. The combination of these literatures is novel and provides theoretical explanations rele...

This research explores the emotional labour of university students whilst volunteering on the Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) sports-based outreach project. Using data from semi-structured interviews with students (n = 40) this paper draws on the work of Arlie Hochschild (1983, 2012) to explore the feeling, display and regulation of emotion by this cohort of volunteers throughout their involvement on the SUNEE project. The findings suggest that students’ emotional labour is influenced by a variety of challenging attitudes and situations that they encounter when attempting to coach “hard to reach” groups. To perform such emotional labour, students often chose to transmute emotion, separating their actual emotions from their outward display to convey a demeanour necessitated by the perceived feeling rules of the coaching context.

The English Premier League possesses multiple global dimensions, including its clubs’ economic ownership, player recruitment patterns and television broadcasts of its matches. The owner of Hull City Association Football Club’s economic rights, Dr Assam Allam, announced plans to re-name the club ‘Hull City Tigers’ in an attempt to re-orientate the club towards seemingly lucrative East Asian, and specifically Chinese, markets in 2013. This article, first, draws upon Manuel Castells’ work in The Rise of the Network Society to critically discuss the logic of Hull City’s proposed reorientation to suit ‘new middle class’ consumers in China and the East Asian global region and second, uses the example to theoretically engage with Castells’ idea that ‘networks’ replace ‘hierarchies’ as social structures. This leads to the argument that while these plans might intend to strengthen the club’s financial position, they overlook a concern with local environments that Castells guides us toward. B...

The focus of this article centers around an established universities sports outreach program—the Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project—and explores how its core workforce, student volunteers, perceive that they develop effective working relationships with the project’s “hard-to-reach” clients. The SUNEE project represents an alliance between the region’s five universities to tackle social exclusion, and promote and nurture social capital and civil responsibility through the vehicle of sports. This joined-up approach to sports development provides the region’s student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors, and leaders by working with a range of hard-to-reach groups. To explore how the dynamics of the project influenced relationship statuses between SUNEE’s diverse participants, from the perspective of the student volunteers, this article draws upon Robert Putnam’s notion of social capital to interpret ...

This thesis provides an in-depth study into the development of student volunteers’ motivation during their participation in a sports-based outreach project and how their experiences during the programme serve to influence their commitment and retention to it. The Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project represents an alliance between the region’s five universities to tackle social exclusion, and promote and nurture social capital and civil responsibility through the vehicle of sport. This joined-up approach to sports development provides the region’s student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors and leaders by working with a range of ‘hard to reach’ groups. This qualitative investigation utilises data generated from semi-structured interviews (n=40) and describes a sequence of social and psychological transitions undertaken by student volunteers over the course of their involvement in the project. This i...

This thesis provides an in-depth study into the development of student volunteers’ motivation during their participation in a sports-based outreach project and how their experiences during the programme serve to influence their commitment and retention to it. The Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project represents an alliance between the region’s five universities to tackle social exclusion, and promote and nurture social capital and civil responsibility through the vehicle of sport. This joined-up approach to sports development provides the region’s student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors and leaders by working with a range of ‘hard to reach’ groups. This qualitative investigation utilises data generated from semi-structured interviews (n=40) and describes a sequence of social and psychological transitions undertaken by student volunteers over the course of their involvement in the project. This i...

We can no longer claim that academic interest in the area of sport and social inclusion is lacking. Dedicated books, special issues, commissioned reports, and landmark articles on the topic of social inclusion and sport have been produced by devoted scholars. The same can be said for the burgeoning area of sport for development and peace. These relatively young academic fields seem to be struggling to create new fundamental theoretical insights about how organized sport can both act as an inclusive space and as a vehicle for broader developmental outcomes. Despite scholarly advancements, there remains a number of empirical and theoretical gaps. The aim of this special issue is to critically reflect on issues related to sport, development, and inclusion, and to do so via transdisciplinary and intersectoral perspectives. By making such a contribution, we aim to open up new research pathways.

This article investigates the impacts of 'super-austerity' upon sport-focussed third sector organisations (TSSOs) in England, and how they negotiate the implications of an increasingly constrained fiscal climate. Set against the backdrop of the recent election of the Conservative government (in 2015), the research explores the relationship of these TSSOs to both local and central government. To do this, the authors draw upon semi-structured interviews undertaken with the CEOs/managers of 14 TSSOs of varying size and scope. The article reports how TSSOs have acted to negotiate the advances of 'super-austerity' and move to obtain resource sufficiency. The findings also offer an insight into how sustained government spending cuts and a concomitant residual commitment of local authorities to sport are shaping not only TSSOs relationships with the public sector, but also with each other. The article discusses the role of sport in the overall function and remit of the TSSOs that comprise the sample as the sector adapts to compliment a 'smarter' state.

This case provides a commentary of the key methodological procedures implemented to qualitatively explore consecutive volunteering across a series of major events showcasing competitive international hockey. Throughout, we attend to the central tenets of the research design, longitudinal field-based research, by describing the approaches taken to access, build and maintain a growing sample of participants, whilst concurrently collecting and analysing rich qualitative data from this peer group. In doing this, we provide a commentary of the decision-making processes underpinning such strategies, and present an academic rationale for their selection. Central to this case study, is a focus upon the implementation of what is a predominantly field-based research project. Of principal concern within this case study is therefore the reporting of the lived experience of the researcher 'in the field' as he sought to recruit participants to the study, and subsequently elicit rich qualitative data from them. Communicated within such accounts are the thought processes and problem-solving strategies of the field-based researcher as he sought to navigate the novel social milieu that he had immersed himself within in order to glean an in-depth insight into the world of the hockey event-volunteer. Additionally, we discuss the steps that we took to enhance the quality and rigour of the findings alongside the theoretical basis for doing so. Learning Outcomes By the end of the case, students should be able to • Illustrate a variety of techniques that can be employed to access and recruit participants within predominantly field-based qualitative research • Explain in detail steps that can be taken to ensure the 'data quality' or 'trustworthiness' of data collection and analysis procedures in qualitative research • Examine the challenges of managing the participant sample in longitudinal research and the strategies that can be adopted to facilitate this • Compile a list of practical lessons learnt from the fieldwork documented in this case to consider when undertaking similar field-based research methods

Research Question: Adopting a case study approach, this article draws upon resource dependence theory (RDT) to examine the impact of austerity upon a third sector sport organisation (TSSO) that specialises in delivering disability sport provision in Liverpool, England.

Research Methods: In-depth qualitative data was collected from 15 semi-structured interviews with senior officials belonging to the TSSO. Data were thematically analysed to explore stakeholders' perspectives of how the wider fiscal environment has affected the organisation and how such impacts have been managed.

Results and Findings: The findings illustrate the financial challenges faced by the TSSO as a consequence of reductions in available funding. The article then demonstrates how the TSSO manages resources to weather such financial challenges and attempt to grow its delivery capability through partnership and network development.

Implications: This article identifies the implications imposed upon the TSSO in a time of austerity and explores, using an RDT lens, the management and growth strategies employed by the organisation to navigate these complex circumstances without compromising a steadfast commitment to its mission values.

This paper examines the evolution of student volunteers’ motivation during their participation in a sports-based outreach project and how their experiences during the programme serve to influence their commitment and retention to it. The Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project is a university-led community outreach initiative that provides the region's student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors and leaders by working with a range of hard-to-reach groups. This work draws on qualitative data generated from semi-structured interviews (n = 40) and describes a sequence of motivational transitions undergone by student volunteers over the course of their involvement in the project. In order to illustrate this, the paper applies the socio-psychological framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to not only index the type of motivations that compel students to volunteer on the SUNEE project, but to also track motivational adaptation and reveal the features occurring within the project, which serve to either facilitate volunteer motivation or retention (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). By using the example of the SUNEE project, this research demonstrates how students’ motivation to volunteer changes from the extrinsic (i.e., instrumental reasons such as enhancing one's employability profile) to the intrinsic (i.e., enjoying the experience) motivations the longer the person has taken part in the project. The findings demonstrate the utility of the SDT as a framework with which to understand student motivation to volunteer within a university-led sports-based community outreach setting. The theoretical contributions of the study to the literature on student volunteering are outlined, and implications are drawn for practice and future research.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the validity of predicting O2max from sub-maximal O2 values elicited during perceptually-regulated treadmill exercise tests. Methods: Eleven males and seven females with a mean age of 21.7 (±2.8) years completed three identical sub-maximal, perceptually-guided graded exercise tests (PGXTs) on a motorised treadmill and a final maximal graded exercise test (GXT) to establish O2max. Participants performed testing over a ten day period, allowing for two days rest between tests. When performing the PGXTs participants were required to produce intensities corresponding to levels 9, 11, 13 and 15 on Borg’s 6-20 ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) scale, in that order. Each RPE production level was performed for three minutes, measurements of O2 and heart rate were measured continuously and recorded in the final 30 seconds of each level. The Bruce protocol was selected for the maximal GXT ( O2maxGXT). Individual linear regression relationshi...

The purpose of this study was to determine for the first time whether VO2max could be predicted accurately and reliably from a treadmill-based perceptually regulated exercise test (PRET) incorporating a safer and more practical upper limit of RPE 15 ("Hard") than used in previous investigations. Eighteen volunteers (21.7 +/- 2.8 years) completed three treadmill PRETs (each separated by 48 h) and one maximal graded exercise test. Participants self-regulated their exercise at RPE levels 9, 11, 13 and 15 in a continuous and incremental fashion. Oxygen uptake VO2 was recorded continuously during each 3 min bout. VO2 values for the RPE range 9-15 were extrapolated to RPE(19) and RPE(20) using regression analysis to predict individual VO2max scores. The optimal limits of agreement (LoA) between actual (48.0 +/- 6.2 ml kg(-1) min(-1)) and predicted scores were -0.6 +/- 7.1 and -2.5 +/- 9.4 ml kg(-1) min(-1) for the RPE(20) and RPE(19) models, respectively. Reliability analysis for the VO2max predictions yielded LoAs of 1.6 +/- 8.5 (RPE(20)) and 2.7 +/- 9.4 (RPE(19)) ml kg(-1) min(-1) between trials 2 and 3. These findings demonstrate that (with practice) a novel treadmill-based PRET can yield predictions of VO2max that are acceptably reliable and valid amongst young, healthy, and active adults.

The focus of this paper centres around an established universities sports-based outreach programme – The Sport Universities North East England (SUNEE) project – and explores how its core workforce, student volunteers, perceive that they develop effective working relationships with the project's 'hard to reach' clients. The SUNEE project represents an alliance between the region's five universities to tackle social exclusion, and promote and nurture social capital and civil responsibility through the vehicle of sport. This joined-up approach to sports development provides the region's student volunteers with vast opportunities to gain both experience and qualifications as sports coaches, mentors and leaders by working with a range of 'hard to reach' groups. To explore how the dynamics of the project influenced relationship statuses between SUNEEs diverse participants, from the perspective of the student volunteers, this article draws upon Robert Putnam's notion of social capital to interpret the experiences of the study's percipients (n=40). Captured using semi-structured interviews, students indicate that over the course of their participation in the project, social capital served both exclusionary and integrative functions, yet as time elapsed, social capital was increasingly generated between SUNEE's diverse participants, playing a crucial role in bringing both volunteers and 'hard to reach' clients together.