Developing through sport: evidencing sport impacts on young people

Abstract

The use of sport in pursuit of international development goals is broadening, with widespread policy support for sports-based programmes that promote social, educational and health goals. Academic assessment has however been more critical, posing searching questions about the paucity of evidence that justifies the use of sport in these roles. Recent growth in evaluation studies has increased the evidence-base but carries some risks of privileging positivist forms of knowledge and fails to engage with issues surrounding decolonization of research.1 This essay suggests that reflexive qualitative studies that capture authentic local knowledge can help address both of these issues, illustrating this through an exploratory study conducted with young women and adult sport workers involved in a ‘successful’ community-based sports programme in Delhi, India (n = 38). It is argued that the form of data obtained can enhance academic understanding and assist in the process of decolonization of sport-in-development research.

Notes

¹ Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

² Coalter, Long and Duffield, Recreational Welfare; Holt, Sport and the British; Collins et al. , Sport and Social Exclusion.

³ E.g. in the UK, Department for Media Culture and Sport (DCMS), A Sporting Future for All and Game Plan; also Policy Action Team 10, The Contribution of Sport and the Arts.

⁴ E.g. Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group (SDP IWG), Literature Reviews.

⁵ E.g. Blackshaw and Long, ‘What's the Big Idea?’; Coalter, Allison and Taylor, The Role of Sport; Coalter, A Wider Social Role; Crabbe, ‘Avoiding the Numbers Game’; Donnelly et al. , ‘The Use of Sport’; Kay, Houlihan and Welford, Guide to Education and Sport; Long et al. , Count me in.

⁶ E.g. Coalter, Allison and Taylor, The Role of Sport; Kay and Bradbury, ‘Youth Sport Volunteering’; Long et al., Count me in.

⁷ Collins et al., Sport and Social Exclusion, 8.

⁸ E.g. Bailey, ‘Physical Education’; Coalter, Allison and Taylor, The Role of Sport; Coalter, Sport and Community Development; Coalter, A Wider Social Role; Long et al., Count me in; Long and Sanderson, ‘Community Benefits from Sport?’; SDP IWG, Literature Reviews.

⁹ E.g. Coalter, Sport and Community Development; Almond et al. , New Opportunities.

¹⁰ Coalter, Sport-in-Development, 2.

¹¹ Laws, Harper and Marcus, Research for Development, 273.

¹² Brown and Strega, Research as Resistance; Denzin and Lincoln, The Landscape of Qualitative Research; , ‘Where Politics and Evaluation Meet’ and ‘How Can Theory-based Evaluation’.

¹³ Coalter, A Wider Social Role, 41–5; following Weiss, ‘Where Politics and Evaluation Meet’ and ‘How Can Theory-based Evaluation’, and Pawson, Evidence-Based Policy.

¹⁴ Spencer et al. , Quality in Qualitative Evaluation.

¹⁵ Laws, Harper and Marcus, Research for Development, 273.

¹⁶ Denzin and Lincoln, The Landscape of Qualitative Research, 16.

¹⁷ Denzin and Lincoln, The Landscape of Qualitative Research, 16; Laws, Harper and Marcus, Research for Development.

¹⁸ Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

¹⁹ E.g. Martinez et al. , ‘Culturally Appropriate Research’.

²⁰ Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Apffel-Marglin and Marglin, Decolonizing Knowledge.

²¹ Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Apffel-Marglin and Marglin, Decolonizing Knowledge.

²² Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 1.

²³ Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 42.

²⁴ Apffel-Marglin and Marglin, Decolonizing Knowledge, 9.

²⁵ Apffel-Marglin and Marglin, Decolonizing Knowledge, 7, 9.