Participant Information Sheet

Researcher:  

My name is Madeleine Dove. I’m a PhD student at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology in the College of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. My supervisor is Dr. Caroline Schuster. 

 

Background: I grew up playing sport in Canberra, and have been involved as a coach, player and committee member in local football for the past few years. I am very passionate about inclusive sport and investment in women’s football, and I have previously researched fan behaviour at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. I also have a background in service design, futures research, and stakeholder engagement for government, and that shapes my approach to doing research that has practical applications for organisations and the public.

 

Project Title: The production of performance knowledge in elite Australian women's football

 

General Outline of the Project:  

Description and Methodology: Elite sport today relies heavily on science, technology, and data to optimise athlete’s performances. This research project is trying to understand how these tools are used by athletes and people working in youth and women’s football, and how they’re shaping the future of sport. I will be spending about 14 months at Capital Football, trying to understand how people make use of technology, data, and sports science. I will use qualitative methods (interviews, workshops, observing people at work or sport) to try and understand how people relate to each other and the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in managing athletic performance. 

 

Participants: This project will involve around 80 participants. These participants will be athletes, coaches, medical professionals, volunteers, researchers, and journalists who are involved in elite football. 

Use of Data and Feedback: This research will be used to write my PhD thesis at the Australian National University, and likely as part of conference papers or journal articles relating to this project. The data collected as part of this project may be used for future research where I am an investigator. If you agree to be interviewed, any transcriptions of that interview will be made available to you via email. I will give you 4 weeks to respond/provide feedback on this transcript; if no response is heard, I will assume consent. A copy of my PhD thesis will be available to all participants who wish to see it. In addition, a summary of this research will be made available at www.madeleinedove.com. 

 

Participant Involvement:

Voluntary Participation Withdrawal: You do not have to participate in this research, and you can stop your involvement at any time up until I publish this research. You do not have to provide an explanation for withdrawing from this project, and you will not suffer any negative consequences for doing so. You can refuse to answer anything that I ask you at any time. Participation in the research is not an expectation of your employment / professional relationship / association with the research team, and your choice will not affect your relationship with any party. If you choose to stop your involvement in this research, I will delete all data collect about you, unless you would like me to keep it.

The exception to this is if you participate in any workshops that I run as part of this project. Workshops will be conducted according to Chatham House Rules. This means that “participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed” (Chatham House 2022). So, any discussion, including your contributions, and outcomes of the workshop can be used be me, or anyone else in the room, but that information won’t be attributed to you. If you withdraw your participation from this research, your contributions at workshops will remain as part of the workshop outcomes but will not have your name attached. 

Location, Duration and What does participation in the research entail?

This research will take place from June 2023 to November 2024 in Canberra, Australia. Occasionally I will travel alongside participants within Australia as they attend games and training camps. Normally, my place of research will be your place of sport or work. This means at playing fields, in the gym, or at your office or clinic. If you would prefer to talk to me away from these places, we can meet somewhere like a coffee shop.

 

Participant observation: This means that I will spend time with you as you go about your work, sport, or life to learn more about your role and involvement within football. The time I spend with you might range from a few hours to several weeks. With your permission, I will take notes and sometimes take photos or videos that don’t show who you are. Your name will be kept confidential unless you want to share your identity. Examples of activities that I will be observing are:

• Matches, trainings, gym sessions, video analysis sessions

• Coach and backroom staff meetings and planning sessions

• Administration meetings
   

Interviews: Interviews will last no more than 2 hours. If you give permission, I will record the interview, and may transcribe part or all of our conversation. If you prefer, I can just take notes without using a recorder. I might ask your sensitive questions about your experience playing or working in football, and how you interact with other people in that environment. You can ask to stop or take a break from the interview at any time, and you can ask me not to record or write something down. Your name will be kept confidential unless you want to share your identity. Examples of questions I might ask you are as follows:
 

• Describe your week to me. How many hours per day/week do you spend training, playing or doing other activities required by the club (e.g. meal-prepping, watching video footage, attending physio treatment)? 

• What types of monitoring and data collection (e.g. GPS tracker, nutrition tracking, mental health assessments, menstrual tracking) are undertaken by the football club?

• How much do you know about how your data is used and how your training programs are developed? Do you wish you knew more or less? Do you wish you were more or less involved in these decisions?

• What is your coaching expertise? How did you learn to be a coach and what formal qualifications did you undertake?

• How do you make decisions about the team or individual players? What factors do you consider and how do you know it’s the right decision?

• What do you think about the standard of (medical/physio/strength & conditioning) that the team has available to them, and in women’s football in general? 
   

Workshops: Workshops may last up to 1 day and include up to 30 participants who you may or may not already know. Workshops will be conducted according to Chatham House Rules (see previous section). Workshops will ask you to work together with other participants using creative materials to brainstorm ideas, respond to prompts, and give feedback on emerging themes in this research. The outcomes of workshops will be made available to participants. 

 

Risks: 
Discomfort/distress: It is possible that during my time observing or interviewing you, that I ask you something that upsets you or is distressing. I will take your physical and verbal cues to try to minimise distress, and I will check in with you about how you’re feeling about our discussion. If I want to ask you about something that I know is a sensitive topic, I will ask your permission to discuss that topic beforehand. 
 

Your privacy: It is possible that someone who reads my thesis will be able to identify you as a participant. This risk is highest for participants who choose to share their identity within this research. I will reduce this risk by keeping participants confidential unless they wish to be identified. All data related to interviews and participant observation sessions will be de-identified. I will create pseudonyms for project participants, and sometimes I will deliberately leave out or misrepresent small pieces of information to mask your identity. If there is information that might affect your safety, employment, or the integrity of competitions that you are involved in, please do not share it with me, or you can ask me to leave it out of my data collection.  I will keep your information confidential, but other members of the focus group will hear what you say, or may know you personally. Please try not to mention any confidential or defamatory information, information that can cause social harm to others, or information about illegal activities during focus groups. Information that you hear in focus groups should not be shared outside the group.

 

Benefits: Within the discipline of anthropology, this research will contribute to addressing significant gaps in (1) the anthropology of sport, particularly women’s participation, (2) medical anthropology and science and technology studies’ knowledge about the practice of sports medicine and sports science, (3) ethnographic research on the use of technology and data in elite sports, and (4) the anthropology of temporality and hope in sport. I anticipate that this research process and findings will benefit the governance and cultures of  football in Australia through centring athlete’s experiences and working with sports administrators in collaborative ways. I hope that my research findings will contribute to healthier and safer sporting environments for women. In this sense, this work will be of indirect benefit to those who contribute and continue to be involved with football.

 

Confidentiality: Myself (Madeleine) and my supervisor Associate Professor Caroline Schuster are the only people who will have access to general interview data and participant observation notes. Some interviews will be transcribed and returned to interview participants. All data (recordings, notes, transcripts, and photographs) will be kept in a password protected folder on the ANU’s OneDrive storage. Participant identity will not be disclosed unless requested by the participant. Confidentiality will be protected as far as the law allows. I will take reasonable steps to protect participant identity, as detailed elsewhere in this information sheet.

 

Privacy Notice:

In collecting your personal information within this research, the ANU must comply with the Privacy Act 1988. The ANU Privacy Policy is available at https://policies.anu.edu.au/ppl/document/ANUP_010007 and it contains information about how a person can:

• Access or seek correction to their personal information;

• Complain about a breach of an Australian Privacy Principle by ANU, and how ANU will handle the complaint.
   

Data Storage:
Where: All project-related data will be stored in an encrypted and password-protected file hosted by my ANU Microsoft OneDrive account. This data will be accessible only to me (Madeleine).

How long: This data will be stored for at least five years following any publications arising from this research, and in perpetuity where ANU access allows.

Handling of Data following the required storage period: I may keep this data for use in future research projects and will maintain the confidentiality parameters detailed in this document. 

 

 

 

Queries and Concerns:

Contact Details for More Information:

Madeleine Dove

0411 329 140

Madeleine.dove@anu.edu.au

 

Associate Professor Caroline Schuster (My supervisor)

02 6125 7043

caroline.schuster@anu.edu.au

 

Contact Details if in Distress:

Lifeline

Phone 13 11 14

Text 0411 13 11 14

Chat online https://www.lifeline.org.au/crisis-chat/

 

Sports Chaplaincy Australia

Phone 1800 77 22 46

Website https://sportschaplaincy.com.au/

 

Ethics Committee Clearance:

The ethical aspects of this research have been approved by the ANU Human Research Ethics Committee (Protocol 2022/394). If you have any concerns or complaints about how this research has been conducted, please contact:

Ethics Manager
The ANU Human Research Ethics Committee
The Australian National University
Telephone: +61 2 6125 3427
Email: Human.Ethics.Officer@anu.edu.au