Edinburgh Napier University

  The University of Edinburgh was commissioned by sport coach UK to investigate coaches outside the system. The aims of this research were twofold:
1. To design a template for coaching organisations and NGB's to access the views of coaches who did not engage with the system.
2. To carry out a pilot study using the template to ascertain the usefulness of the proposed methods
The resulting template used a mixture of survey and interviews and concluded that an anonymous online survey, followed up by individual interviews was the best method for gaining the required information. The survey was cascaded using a variety of coaching organisations and individuals to access as many coaches outside the system as possible in the short timescale allowed. Interviews to gain deeper, richer data could be conducted from survey respondents who indicated they would be prepared to be further involved in the research process. These interviews should be carried out by non-involved individuals to maintain the anonymity of the participants.
The pilot study collected 204 survey completions from 34 different sports with the majority of responding coaches being either unqualified, Level 1 or Level 2 in their sports. From this nine individual and nine focus group interviews were carried out. Key messages from this pilot study included:
- 92% felt all coaches should continue to learn but then only 69% felt improving their coaching was important to them
- The internet now appears to be the most popular source of coaching information for this group of coaches
- 24% of these coaches did not or had not used any coaching organisation for support
- 55 governing bodies represented with 38.7% of coaches experiencing support as opposed to 61.3% who did not feel supported
- These coaches gave four main reasons for non-support
o Little or no support offered
o Feelings of isolation
o Individuals, not NGB's, helpful
o Political agendas
- According to these coaches the system consists of Level 3 coaches and above
- Student sport does not belong within the system
- Cynicism from coaches about coaching organisations and NGBs
- According to these coaches the system is concerned about collecting money not supporting these coaches