Power and biases: a sports academic shares their story
The next article in a series with anonymous contributors. A reseacher working within sports discusses feeling valued and the value of working together
As an academic, I think rugby, and sport generally, shows up academia for the lack of relationship building and connection you see within institutions. Sport and applied practitioners think relationships and people first, and sport after.
Academics often think about papers, publishing, reputation first, and then the sport bit comes after. This is why I feel academics struggle to recruit as there's often little meaningful involvement in that relationship bit and, as a result, a real lack of buy-in or receptiveness of research within the sport space at various levels.
Rugby loves research; if you put the work in to show you are there to stay, you aren't just going to send a survey and never get back in touch, and you have a plan for how this will benefit them.
I would say the interactions between academics and rugby need to be mutually beneficial. Following on the relationships piece - academics need to do more to establish meaningful and valuable connections with those working in sport.
It is a very one sided space with academics often asking a lot of the sport, the participants, the staff, with very little in return.
In my experience, a lot of these individuals are part time or even voluntary, so their time is incredibly valuable which I don't think academics fully understand or appreciate.
Of course, I don't think this is a rugby specific or even sport specific issue, you see academics asking lots of various industries without a plan of how this will mutually benefit.
On the flip side, if there is an academic in the rugby/sport environment who has shown a vested interest and possesses a real understanding of how this will benefit you, I think more can be done to welcome those people into the environments and spaces which will produce this meaningful interaction.
With this, I mean ensuring academics enter the project at the right level of the organisation - often we target the coaches, support staff, players, however, academics and those from the sport organisation need to acknowledge which level is most likely to make change or the impact they are aiming for.
From a sports institution perspective, I feel traditional and non-traditional routes are both valued and are becoming increasingly valued in the current landscape.
Sport academics acknowledge the benefits of individuals coming with diverse experiences, mainly due to the relationships and networks this will naturally produce and the positive impact this has for academics then seeking to conduct research in these environments.
However, this is not the case across the whole institution and outside of sport. My feeling is that those within sports organisations value different backgrounds/routes depending on, put simply, what they want you for as an academic.
My experience is that coaches and support staff are heavily interested and invested in research. The using/utilising bit is the harder part, but this is due to the 'entering at the right level' point made previously - coaching and support staff want to make changes and be evidence informed, but they are not the individuals responsible for funding and strategic changes.
I know this is of course not at all the case across sports and is largely dependent on individuals.
Participants in the sport at all levels need to be heard more within sports research. We have a fascination with the elite, but these are not the people who keep the sport going.
Those community level participants play the sport, run the sport, govern the sport. They referee the sport and are the fans of the sport which ultimately funds the sport. They are administrators at the lower levels of sport, such as the behind the scenes kit people, clubhouse helpers at clubs and fixture schedulers.
These people see everything, but are often not thought of when academics write their ethics and, as such, aren't then contacted when sent to clubs and teams.
Feeling valued
I have felt the most value when I have had buy-in from certain individuals, or a team, and they really pushed me and what I was saying. They will hold you up, speak about you in meetings, refer to you and your work, and use your work to guide their conversations and policies.
As researchers, all you want is a bit of credibility and to know that the people you are working with respect you and what you do, so when you are CC'd in to an email where they go 'speak to X about this', 'X has great thoughts on this', those are the moments I felt most valued as I know I have resonated with them.
When teams, clubs, or individuals aren't sure of where you sit, it creates a lot of ambiguity for you and for everyone around you in that environment. This comes down to understanding the purpose of what you are doing, pitching at the right level, and being clear on what you both want from each other.
Those 3 elements are what often leads to you feeling out of place, being questioned or treated with scepticism, or pushed to the side. These feelings can then give in to some inner self-doubt, cause you to question yourself and your involvement, and lead to you behaving in different ways.
For example, I made an assumption everyone knew why I was coming into an environment. This led to some scepticism and doubt from the support staff and, rightly so - they didn't know why I was there and I hadn't known to explain this in great detail.
Thus, when I didn't feel quite welcome, and felt challenged by these support staff, I started to question myself - is it me? Is it my background in research? How do I come across? Is it because I never played the sport? Is it because I never played sport to a high level? Is it that I don't look the part, I don't have the build?
This caused me to be anxious, nervous, withdrawn, and really not create a good impression of myself, which led to further doubt and scepticism, and so forth.
This was all due to a lack of building meaningful relationships, establishing clear communication, and doing some of the leg work to understand the environment I was going in to.
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