Measuring the Implementation of an Ethics Initiative: Child Protection in Scottish Sport

Abstract

Methodologies for measuring the implementation of social inclusion and ethics in sport frequently draw on social marketing techniques or stage models of health behaviour change. This paper illustrates how a composite model of cultural change in sport can be used to monitor progress and trace resistance to ethics and social inclusion work in sport. The Scottish research was commissioned by sportscotland to assess how their child protection programme had impacted on a selection of Scottish governing bodies of sport. Fifteen sports were identified by the funder to take part in the research, of which 12 agreed to participate. Telephone and face-to-face interviews were held with key stakeholders at national and club level and supplementary focus groups were held with a small number of club level child protection officers. The results indicate a spread of responses in the different organisations with the following distribution: leaders (5), sceptics (2), followers (4) and resisters (1). These results are discussed in relation to the general cultural shift from ‘permissive’ to ‘prescriptive’ in the agencies responsible for overseeing Scottish child protection in sport.