Athletes’ subjective evaluations of the implementation of dual career measures

ABSTRACT

Athletes face intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints when pursuing high-performance sport and a professional career (education and vocation). The ‘EU Guidelines on Dual Career’ were developed to guide, structure, and foster the athlete’s dual careers in the European Union countries. Thus, this study investigates the effective implementation of favourable DC environments as subjectively perceived by athletes.

A qualitative research paradigm was used. Semi-structured interviews (n = 21) were used to gather information. The sample was composed of 12 male and nine female elite athletes from six different EU countries. The athletes pursued different sports and were in various stages of their athletic careers. A structured qualitative content analysis, including frequency analysis, was conducted.

Based on the athletes’ subjective evaluations, findings showed that athletes could still not manage a DC and balance their resources successfully. Thus, the EU Guidelines, as a measure for DC by the policies, were insufficiently implemented. Athletes claimed especially the need for organised governmental support. Also, the findings elaborated on the strengths and weaknesses of the existing EU Guidelines. It is the first international academic study assessing the EU Guidelines’ implementation of DC athletes in different countries. This research could help EU policymakers and national authorities implement the guidelines to facilitate favourable dual career environments effectively and improve their future employability.

KEYWORDS:

• Elite athletes
• dual career
• policy measures
• evaluation
• EU Guidelines

This work was conducted under Media as a channel of Athletes’ Dual Careers promotion and education/EdMEdia project which is cofounded by the European Commission under the Erasmus + Sport program (Application Reference Number: 603456-EPP-1-2018-1-LT-SPO-SCP, Grant Agreement no 2018 -2708/001- 001).

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank to all project team members for the support in creating research questions and collecting the data..

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Based on the work of Swann, C., Moran, A. & Piggott, D. 2014. Defining elite athletes: Issues in the study of expert performance in sport psychology. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 16. The definition of elite athlete varies on a continuum of validity. For this research, the authors agreed on the definition of elite athletes due to a between-sports comparison including all athletes competing at least at a national level up to international level, independent on the competitive success they had in their sports.