“Nobody will be there to do the laundry for you”: A qualitative study of wellbeing in university athletes in two cultures

ABSTRACT

This study explores how British and Hong Kong (HK) university athletes make sense of their wellbeing through sports participation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants: six from British universities and six from HK universities. Interviews were conducted bilingually, enabling code-switching between Cantonese and English to preserve nuances between the cultures. Transcripts were analysed via Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results indicated that: (1) British and HK participants experienced sport as drawing out strength of character and as a therapeutic agent; (2) British participants claimed that university is an energising environment, yet competing for their university brings emotional turmoil; and (3) HK participants claimed that sport helped maturation, yet HK’s culture is counterproductive to athletic development. Our findings offer a cross-cultural, lifeworld perspective of how being a university athlete may be a double-edged sword. We highlight ways this unique population requires support from policy makers and practitioners in sports and other relevant fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture‌
• Hong Kong
• interpretative phenomenological analysis
• qualitative‌ research
• sports‌
• United Kingdom
• ‌university athlete
• ‌wellbeing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bill Cheuk Long Chan

Dr Bill Cheuk Long Chan received his PhD from the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral thesis was a multi-method exploration of physical activity, personality, and wellbeing in older adults and university students in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. During his PhD, he taught both tutorials and laboratory classes in Psychology. He was also a tutor in the Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences Writing Centre. He is currently an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Billy Lee

Dr Billy Lee received first degree and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He is currently a lecturer of psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. His main research interest is Phenomenological Psychology, in particular the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to conduct experience-near psychological research. He has a special interest in cultural psychology; phenomenological psychology and psychotherapy; phenomenology of alterity and minority experience.