STUDY I PROCEDURE

Contact was made with the club through the primary researcher as the club was seeking a sport psychologist for their 1st women’s team, competing for the title in the German 3rd league. Upon meeting for the first time, the club had already filled the position, but was eager to engage the services of the primary researcher as a coach for their U17 team, as he had prior playing experience. The two sides agreed that if the primary researcher would lead the U17 girl’s team, then the club would agree to participate in the doctoral research.

Anonymity was offered to each athlete and coach at the club, but they insisted they were proud to have the name Eintracht Leipzig Süd e.V. take part and would welcome the results. Still, it was considered better to keep players’, coaches’, and staff names anonymous. Results were also to be discussed with the participants and any data would not be included if desired by the club or individual participants.

First contact with the U17 players was achieved through the head coach of the 1st team as well as the youth coordinator. Initial trust was gained though various practice sessions and team building sessions, where the primary researcher made his intentions clear: he was here to coach, observe, learn, and give a report back to the members of the club. In addition, participants were informed that if they felt uncomfortable or unwilling to participate in any of the actions within the study, they were free to inform the principal researcher directly or through one of the coaches. Moreover, a decision regarding participation would in no way affect their position as a member of the team.

Interview Procedure

The interviews were conducted in a variety of locations (e.g. at home, the club, etc.) and ranged from 9 - 30minutes, depending on the how much information the participant choose to share. All interviews were recorded using a recorder or though a cell phone and then later transcribed for analysis. Each participant was reminded of the anonymity and that their decision to participate was 100% voluntary.

A total of 20 participants were interviewed for the first study (Table II), with at least one member of each team from the U13 - 1st team present. This methodology was done to assure that all all members of this environment had a voice.

Team U13 U15 U17 2nd Team 1st Team Total

Players 1 2 2 2 2 9

Coaches 1 1 0 1 2 5

Parents 1 1 1 0 0 3

Staff 0 0 1 0 2 3

The interviews were conducted in a manner to make the participants feel welcome and open to share their honest beliefs on the environment. In addition, as the interviews first took place after a minimum of 3 months, a foundation of trust could be used to achieve to ask slightly deeper insights from those participating. A guideline of the questions asked can be found in the appendix.

Observation Procedure

Observational data were collected each time the principal author was present at the club, at least 1-2 times per week. This was achieved either during the practice sessions he coached himself or through the interactions with other coaches and their teams before or after his training. The double role of coach-researcher could be seen as having its disadvantages, but this was often solved by allowing the assistant coach to run practice and to allow full focus on the behavior and conversations of the players.

In relation to observing the other teams, being a coach had its advantages, as other coaches were eager to share information about their teams, the players, and the dynamics with the researcher. In essence, the double role ended up putting the researcher into more situations to observe than if he had simple been a sport psychologist mentoring the first team. Moreover, he was able to add his own perceptions and beliefs to the data on how his team and players fit into the club ATDE (Krane & Baird, 2005).

Archival Data Procedure

Data regarding the club and its competitive league were gathered with simple google searches. These data were gathered in preparation for interviews with the coordinators and head coach.

Analysis and interpretation

All interviews were transcribed and analyzed were evaluated using directed content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), where the previous categories and factors determined by Henriksen (2010) as well as by Larsen and colleagues (2013) at the AGF soccer academy helped to assist the researchers in their search for themes and ultimately to create codes for the data. As an example, to look at how the ATDE is structured, codes would refer to “family”, “friends” or “colleagues”, to help figure out how each of these members of the microenvironment might fit into the focus group’s lives.

Data from interviews was combined with both the formal and informal ethnographic observation data, and themes and sub themes were created from this analysis. Any text or themes not fitting with the structured theory were to be given their own code. Finally, a node tree of the themes present both in regards to the ATDE as well as ESF was created and compared to those found by Larsen and colleagues (2013). This node tree can be found in Appendix 4.

Establishing Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness was established through three steps: 1) a previously mention, an observational guideline was created by the principal researcher to focus on specific coaching behaviors and communication. 2) Interviews were structured around general concepts and ideas of the club at first and then focused on specific and interesting aspects of the local environment. To establish better reliability of the codes chosen, the researcher assistant evaluated interview separately, after which differences could be discussed (Kvale, 1996). 3) Results were discussed with key members of the environments to determine if they matched the participants’ perceptions.