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How Coaches Can Be a Source of Mental Health Support for Student-Athletes

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Youth sports coaches can be—and frequently are—strong role models and mentors for kids. But too often, they are ill-equipped to handle sensitive issues, including mental health challenges.

There’s a growing movement to change that, experts said during a panel discussion at the SXSW EDU conference here. After all, nearly 30 million U.S. children and teens participate in some form of organized sports.

“Coaches are really well-suited to be able to check in with young people on a regular basis,” said Hannah Olson, the director of the Center for Leadership in Athletics at the University of Washington. "[They] see them every day at practice. [They can] understand what their baseline is, what they look like on an average day, and be able to know when something’s going on, for better or for worse.”

And students look up to their coaches, making these educators prime candidates to offer mental health support and resources.

“Sport is a context that matters really, really deeply to a lot of young people,” Olson said. “Perhaps what happens to them out on the field or on the court is more important to them than what happens in their math classroom, for example.”

Yet coaches rarely get training on how to meet the social-emotional or mental health needs of their student athletes.

A 2022 national survey , conducted by The Ohio State University, the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Initiative, the Susan Crown Exchange, and Nike, found that coaches are most confident at promoting good sportsmanship, making athletes feel welcome on the team, teaching basic sporting techniques and skills, and reporting child abuse and neglect.

The coaches were least confident when it came to helping athletes navigate the pressures of social media, linking athletes to mental health resources, referring athletes to supports for unmet basic needs, like food assistance, and identifying off-the-field stressors among student athletes.

Just under half of coaches said they were “moderately” or “extremely” prepared to address mental health concerns. Forty-two percent felt prepared to work with student-athletes who have experienced trauma, and 35 percent felt prepared to work with athletes who have eating disorders.

Coaches want more training

Two-thirds of the coaches surveyed said they’re interested in having more training on mental health. Only half of school-based coaches are teachers or educators—the rest are parents or other community members.

“Coaches are really undertrained, as a general rule—most coaches receive no training, and the training that they do receive is often not around positive youth development, social and emotional learning, [or] supporting positive mental health of athletes,” said Megan Bartlett, the founder of the national nonprofit Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport.

Said Doug Ute, the executive director of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and a former longtime superintendent: “We’re just so doggone happy that somebody wants to coach 8th grade track, we throw them the keys, and we move on.”

Last year, Ohio became the first state in the country to require that all high school coaches receive mental health training. The Ohio High School Athletic Association is working with policymakers to incorporate that training into already existing professional development, so coaches don’t feel overwhelmed, Ute said.

Ute, a former basketball coach, said he’s excited about what the new law will mean for coaches and students in the state.

“All of my PD as a coach was focused on X’s and O’s—not one bit of wellness for the athletes,” he said. “I wish I could go back and be that young 22-year-old again that was in a classroom and coaching, and focus a little bit more on that wellness of my athletes.”

After all, he added, “coaching is an extension of the school day.”

A similar bill in Maryland passed the state House but later died in committee last year.

And in Washington state, the Center for Leadership in Athletics is working with the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to pass a policy that would require baseline training for coaches that includes foundational skills in youth development, Olson said.

What coaches can do to support students’ mental health

The head coach of the Boston Celtics tries to spend one minute with every player on the team at every practice to check in and see how they’re doing, said Vince Minjares, the project manager of the Sports & Society Program at the Aspen Institute, a Washington-based policy nonprofit. That kind of small, extra step can go a long way, he said.

After all, coaches don’t always know what happened during the school day or at home, Ute said. Getting to know students off the field can help bridge that gap: “Do you know your student-athletes beyond what their skill level is at dribbling or shooting a basketball?”

Coaches can also teach students how to regulate their emotions, Bartlett said. Sports can be a good stress-reliever, but most students need to first learn how to identify when they’re feeling out of control and how to reset themselves, she said.

“We have to understand that kids cannot leave it at the door,” Bartlett said. "[They] cannot turn [their] brain off and say, all of a sudden, ‘I’m just fine for basketball practice or to jump in the pool,’ unless we teach them skills that help them regulate those emotions, help them transition from where they’re at to the environment they need to be in.”

And coaches need to learn how to regulate their own emotions, too, she said. Otherwise, coaches’ actions can be harmful to students’ mental health, she and Olson said.

“Just try to imagine another setting where we can put a grown adult in front of a young person and let them scream in their face, and it’s fine for the outcome so they can win a game,” Olson said. “We don’t let that happen anywhere else, but that has been the norm in sports for a really long time—tolerating toxic behaviors, abusive behaviors.”

Bartlett said she hopes there’s a broader narrative shift about youth mental health that focuses more on prevention than intervention. Sports and coaches should be at the center of that conversation, she said.

“The sport environment is uniquely suited to help young people heal from overwhelming stress or trauma—and there are too many young people who are experiencing overwhelming stress and trauma,” she said. “And even if you aren’t, these practices, the idea of focusing on safe environments where young people can show up as themselves, focusing on the value of physical activity and moving your body, focusing on the experience of being able to be stressed and come back to a baseline ... those are the things that make us mentally well.”

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 22 October 2018

A qualitative investigation of the role of sport coaches in designing and delivering a complex community sport intervention for increasing physical activity and improving health

• Louise Mansfield   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4332-4366 1 ,
• Tess Kay 1 ,
• Nana Anokye 2 &
• Julia Fox-Rushby 3  

BMC Public Health volume  18 , Article number:  1196 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Community sport can potentially help to increase levels of physical activity and improve public health. Sport coaches have a role to play in designing and implementing community sport for health. To equip the community sport workforce with the knowledge and skills to design and deliver sport and empower inactive participants to take part, this study delivered a bespoke training package on public health and recruiting inactive people to community sport for sport coaches. We examined the views of sport coach participants about the training and their role in designing and delivering a complex community sport intervention for increasing physical activity and improving health.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with paid full-time sport coaches ( n  = 15) and community sport managers and commissioners ( n  = 15) with expertise in sport coaching. Interviews were conducted by a skilled interviewer with in-depth understanding of community sport and sport coach training, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis.

Three key themes were identified showing how the role of sport coaches can be maximised in designing and delivering community sport for physical activity and health outcomes, and in empowering participants to take part. The themes were: (1) training sport coaches in understanding public health, (2) public involvement in community sport for health, and (3) building collaborations between community sport and public health sectors.

Training for sport coaches is required to develop understandings of public health and skills in targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people to community sport. Public involvement in designing community sport is significant in empowering inactive people to take part. Ongoing knowledge exchange activities between the community sport and public health sector are also required in ensuring community sport can increase physical activity and improve public health.

Peer Review reports

Regular physical activity is significant in the prevention and treatment of physical and mental health conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, some cancers, anxiety and depression [ 1 ]. Worldwide, the prevalence of physical activity at recommended levels is low. Current estimates in the UK are that approximately 20 million adults (39%) are categorised as inactive because they fail to meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity of 150 min per week of moderate intensity physical activity and strength exercise on at least 2 days [ 2 ]. Increasing population levels of physical activity can potentially improve public health. In England, the Moving More, Living More cross Government group includes representation from national lead agencies, Sport England, the Department of Health and Public Health England and recognises the role that sport can play in helping people to become more active for improved health outcomes [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. This perspective reflects more recent debates about the potential of low intensity physical activity for improving health which challenge established physical activity for health guidelines emphasising moderate and vigorous intensity phyiscal activity [ 6 ].

Successive Sport England strategies have focused on developing sporting opportunites tailored to the needs of diverse communities of local users. With devolvement of public health priorities to local authorities in April 2013, there is a heightened significance of locally based initiatives and the role of complex community interventions for public health outcomes; those that involve several interlocking components important to successful delivery [ 7 , 8 ]. Community-centred interventions can have a positive impact on health behaviours [ 9 , 10 ]. Successful community-based health interventions are associated with extensive formative research, participatory strategies and a theoretical and practical focus on changing social norms [ 11 ].

Sport coaches have a vital role to play in changing social norms around sports through individual and community engagement and empowering or enabling participants to take part in physical activity [ 12 ]. Empowerment theory provides a useful theoretical approach for understanding the complexities of raising physical activity levels through community sport. At the community level, empowerment theory investigates people’s capacity to influence organisations and institutions which impact on their lives [ 13 , 14 ]. The theory addresses the processes by which personal and social factors of life enable and constrain behaviours, and this provides the theoretical basis of this study.

There are 1,109, 000 sport coaches in the UK primarily working in sports clubs or extra-curricular school-based programmes, with much of their expertise focused on beginners and learners and sport enthusiasts [ 15 ]. Sports coaches represent community assets in the development of sport for health programmes for inactive adults who may be apprehensive rather than enthusiastic about taking part in sport [ 12 ], yet little is known about the occupational drivers, priorities and requirements of this workforce. There is potential for them to be a resource for identifying and assessing inactive people and providing physical activity education, promotion and support in local public health environments; a role more commonly associated with routine care in GP surgeries and health centres [ 16 , 17 ]. The potential of sports clubs as a health promotion setting has been recognised [ 18 , 19 ]. Key issues have been identified in developing successful approaches to health promotion in sports clubs including the need for clear health focused strategies, adapting sports activity, ensuring a health promoting environment, enabling learning opportunities about sport for health and workforce training in public health [ 20 ]. Knowledge and skill development in the sport coach workforce is imperative to equip it to design, deliver and evaluate community sport opportunities for public health outcomes [ 21 ]. Most recent models for such workforce development advocate partnership approaches between sport and leisure providers, public health professionals and the participants for whom community sport programmes are designed and delivered [ 22 ]. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of sport coaches in designing and delivering a complex community sport intervention for increasing physical activity and improving health.

Background to the study – The health and sport engagement (HASE) project

Between March 2013 and July 2016, 32 sport coaches delivering and managing community sport in the London Borough of Hounslow were involved in a complex community sport intervention; the Health and Sport Engagement (HASE) project. The aim of the HASE project was to engage previously inactive people in sustained sporting activity for 1 × 30 min a week, examine the associated health and wellbeing outcomes of doing so, and produce information of value to those commissioning public health programmes that could potentially include sport. Full details of the HASE project are provided in the published protocol [ 23 ]. A summary of the HASE project intervention and evaluation phases is provided in Fig.  1 .

The Health and Sport Engagement (HASE) Study overview

Design and delivery of the HASE intervention involved a collaborative partnership between local community participants, sport coaches and community sport managers/ commissioners in the London Borough of Hounslow (LBH), and sport and public health researchers at Brunel University London. Coaches were key stakeholders in the project which employed a collaborative approach to stakeholder engagement, involving them in the initial project ideas development prior to the funding application, and in formative discussions about relevant training and the content and scheduling of training. Training served not only as a form of education and skill development but as a space for on-going involvement of coaches in the co-design [ 24 ] of the training programme, the precise nature of the sport activities and their delivery and evaluation approaches.

During a 12-month delivery phase, community sport coaches delivered 682 sport sessions to 550 people in the HASE project. Community sport coaches with expertise and experience in delivering and managing sport activities and with knowledge of diverse local communities were identified as central to the successful design and implementation of community sport for inactive people. A bespoke HASE training programme was included to identify existing expertise and additional skills and knowledge requirements of community sport coaches in designing and implementing community sport for health. The HASE training schedule for sport coaches consisted of two elements:

To develop understandings of public health for sport coaches, training included The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) Level 2 Award in Understanding Health Improvement, and workshops on targeting, promoting and retaining inactive people to sport ( http://makesportfun.com/ ), and disability, inclusion and sport ( https://disabilitysportscoach.co.uk/training-workshops/ ).

To address the need for cross sector collaboration and partnership between local sport and public health groups, sports coaches and public health professionals attended a bespoke knowledge exchange workshop on getting to know and understand the roles and working practices of personnel in each sector ( http://makesportfun.com/ ).

Between March–September 2013, 32 community sport coaches were trained in the RSPH Level 2 Award in the first phase of the HASE project. Fifteen of those sport coaches were paid and full-time and they also engaged in training about targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people in community sport and an on-line disability in sport course. Fourteen of those additionally attended knowledge exchange activities between sport coaches and public health professionals (1 coach was unavailable due to work commitments). Knowledge exchange activities included demonstrations of adapted sports activities, a ‘meet and greet’ event in which coaches and health professionals were paired to talk and exchange professional information, then paired with another expert at 5-min intervals, and a discussion forum about the strategy and mechanism of local authority public health referral scheme.

The HASE project included a mixed methods evaluation of the outcomes, processes and costs of the complex community sport intervention. Process evaluations are recommended in examining the efficacy of complex interventions and have value in multisite projects where the same interventions are tailored to the specific contexts and delivered and received in diverse ways [ 25 ]. Process evaluations using qualitative methods can complement research designs that assess effectiveness and efficiency quantitatively [ 26 ], by providing in-depth knowledge from those delivering and receiving the interventions. Evaluating the design, implementation, mechanisms of impact, and contextual factors that create different intervention effects can support the development of optimal complex community interventions and contribute to decision making about whether it is feasible to proceed to a larger scale trial [ 27 ]. This study presents findings from the interviews with sport coaches and community sport managers or commissioners with expertise in sport coaching which formed part of the process evaluation in the HASE project.

Data collection

Taking a pragmatic approach to evaluation to ensure timely, practice relevant yet rigorous research [ 28 ] the 15 sport coaches who had been trained in the RSPH Level 2 Award, attended the workshops and completed the on-line disability in sport course were invited for interview. All but one of those had also attended the knowledge exchange workshops with public health professionals. Fifteen community sport managers or commissioners with knowledge of sport coaching and involved in developing the HASE intervention and evaluation were also invited to interview. Thirty telephone interviews were conducted with paid full-time sport coaches ( n  = 15) and community sport managers and commissioners ( n  = 15) with expertise in sport coaching.

Semi structured interviews were conducted by one researcher (LM) for consistency of questioning. The aims of these interviews were twofold: (1) to examine the aspirations and logic underpinning design, delivery, promotion, and commissioning of sport for health projects, and (2) to examine the experiences and views of the HASE training. The interview guide can be found in Additional file  1 . The interview data helped to determine the role of the sports coach in designing and delivering a complex community sport intervention for increasing physical activity and improving health. In this paper direct quotes are included in the results and respondents referred to by gender, self-reported job and coaching role and years of experience (YE).

Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interview data were managed via NVivo 11 software and through the collation of tables and data matrices using Word 2010. The principles of thematic analysis were employed in this study. Thematic analysis allows the organisation, detailed description and scrutiny of patterns of meaning in qualitative data [ 29 , 30 , 31 ]. Analysis involved repeated reading, by two researchers (LM and TK), of interview transcripts, to determine the details of the data and to enable researchers to identify key themes and patterns in it. Themes were identified by theoretical approaches focused on our analytical interest in empowerment in community sport interventions, and by inductive (data-driven) approaches drawing directly from the data produced. Coding frameworks were devised by two researchers (LM and TK). Discrepancies were resolved by discussion and the codes and themes verified by all researchers (LM, TK, NA, JF-R) in a process of identifying, refining and interpreting key themes [ 32 ]. Anonymised quotes from interviewees are provided as evidence form our study. Punctuation was added to unambiguous quotes and where necessary, words added in parentheses to clarify intended meaning.

Interviewees had been employed in the community sport sector for between 6 months and 25 years. Interviews lasted between 18 and 50 min and the mean interview length was 26 min. Three key themes were identified from the interview data that illustrate the significance and role of the sport coach in designing and delivering community sport for physical activity and health outcomes, and in empowering participants to take part: (1) training sport coaches in understanding public health, (2) public involvement in community sport for health, and (3) building collaborations between community sport and public health. We present the results in sections to reflect the identified themes although we are mindful that the themes overlap.

Training sport coaches in understanding public health

Phase 1 of the HASE project provided training for sport coaches and instructors to develop knowledge and understanding of public health and of targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people to sport for health programmes. There was recognition amongst the HASE workforce of the potential for their work in community sport to support public health outcomes through the informal connections between health and their existing qualifications and experience:

we’ve always recognised that it’s (sport) physical activity and health going hand in hand…..Yes this is about sport…but… it’s about engagement, it’s about physical activity, it’s about meaningful activity for young people and adults to gain confidence and skills, but actually it’s linked into health and healthy lifestyles as well (M,Community Sport Manager and Sport Coach, 15YE).

The need for sports coaches to engage in training to develop their understanding of public health and their ability to deliver to health outcomes was also recognised. The training was delivered in two forms – an RSPH Level 2 award, and bespoke training workshops commissioned through the HASE project.

Royal Society for public health (RSPH) level 2 award in understanding health improvement

The RSPH level 2 Award provided HASE sports coaches with the time and space to think about the relationships between sport and health and consider the significance of public health for their work. Those who participated expressed great enthusiasm for the training and emphasised that it had provided them with new knowledge and approaches that were highly relevant to their role in enabling people to become more active. The training was very highly valued:

I’m really glad I took those courses…it changed how I did things…. especially the behaviour change parts …and the (health) things they encourage you to think about … with different groups… also the social and emotional aspect of that (physical activity and health)… it really helped …understand inactivity …and help people (M, Community Leader and Sport Coach, 5YE). It just gave me some space to think about health…and how what I do can link to public health issues (M, Community Sport Coach, 5YE).

A particularly important aspect of the delivery of the RSPH course was tailoring the information and subsequently the activities and their delivery to local population characteristics in Hounslow and to the requirements and priorities of the HASE workforce in supporting people to raise their physical activity levels:

the Hounslow portion of that training was amazing, that was brilliant, I really liked it. I thought that it was crazy that people that live in Chiswick lived four years, on average, four years longer than people that live you know in like other parts of Hounslow for example. I can now talk to kids about health ..through sport (M, Community Sport Coach, 4YE).

Bespoke training workshops: Targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive participants

The workshops focusing on targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people to sport gave sport coaches the knowledge and time to effectively plan their programmes:

The workshops I thought were really good. I think when you’re actually discussing the practicalities, logistics, in reality how can we do this it’s definitely good to give you a chance to have discussions and actually properly sit down and plan. And I was able to go from one workshop, try something in the middle and then come back to the next one and talk about actually I did this and it worked. That sort of camaraderie in a way leaves you feeling motivated, ready to go. (F, Physical Activity Manager and Sport Coach Commissioner, 8YE).

The workshops also helped sports coaches develop knowledge about best practice in supporting and engaging inactive groups in community sport:

The qualification (RSPH) and those workshops are the right approach … they are about saying this is what we know now…this is the best way of doing it….it’s a forum where it brings people together where people meet on a course and then they’ve gone off and developed a programme together (M, Community Sport Commissioner, 15YE).

One of the key things was being in the mix with so many people from different sports... everyone had different stories to talk about, different experiences …knowledge …expertise to share (F, Community Coach Volunteer, 5YE).

Public involvement in community sport for health

Sport coaches identified the involvement of potential participants as important to the co-design and implementation of the community sports. Involving potential participants in designing their local sport offer was viewed as a way for sport coaches to identify both the physical activity and sporting needs of potential participants. It was also way for sport coaches to think about, understand and respond to practical barriers to participation but also the complex personal and social conditions, experiences and views that make taking part difficult; a key tenet of empowerment approaches:

outreach….you’ve got to invest some time in it…..speaking to a captive audience …encouraging them and actually I think there was a desire, they did want to be active but the barrier was the transport and their own physical ability. So knowing that ….and having that barrier taken away from them, it was then easy to attract them in (F, Community Sports Development Manager and Sport Coach, 20YE). you have to make a connection with them …..these people are unemployed, they’ve got housing problems, they’re not working, and also they’ve got addicted to something… you have to sit down with them….discuss with them. It’s someone they can listen to… (M, Community Leader and Sport Coach, 5YE).

Specifically, public involvement was identified as a way to enable sport coaches to recognise diversity and inequality and its impact on physical activity:

(Hounslow) is more diverse. Not everyone in a group goes to the local community centre for activity …not all Asian groups are the same. We need ways of understanding people a bit better …what are some of the conflicts they’re having…so we can offer solutions to (health) problems and not give them another thing they have to do (F, Community Sport Commissioner, 10YE)

Sport coaches supported the use of community focus groups, ‘meet the coach’ and taster sessions as effective forms of public involvement. These activities were important in facilitating active participation of potential participants and in helping community sport coachesto make the right decisions about the implementation of local community sport. Public involvement activities were viewed as a form of collective ownership of the community sport service:

in the past, it’s just been putting on activities and hoping that people turn up if it’s marketed. That’s not attracting the right (inactive) people. For our work …..to be embedded within the communities that you want to work within requires local people to get on board….we need to get out and meet them to reach the people that’s the hard to reach or most at need … we wanted to have more of a relationship with our participants…so we can decide and act together (F, Physical Activity Project Coordinator, 3YE).

For the sport coach workforce, working with participants was a form of community empowerment. It enabled potential participants to influence the development of community sport and physical activity programmes:

I don’t think there’s any point you just putting something on. Present it, get feedback, discuss it and make decisions together. if people are a bit more informed and actually really understand what the drive is behind it, then everything makes more sense you know… it empowers you a little bit to think…and understand…to take ownership of a project (F, School-Community PE Specialist, 25YE).

Building collaborations between community sport and public health

Collaborative working between researchers, local and national sport policy makers, community sport coaches, managers and commissioners, public health professionals and participants defined the design, delivery and evaluation of the HASE project overall. The London Borough of Hounslow had an established network of community sport and physical activity partners operating through a CSPAN (Community Sport and Physical Activity Network). This forum was important to the inception and implementation of the project:

I think the [HASE] approach suits Hounslow really well …six years ago, we were still working very much in siloes and everybody was doing their own thing. Since then we’ve had everybody working together on the community sports, this connectivity network …all our projects are about partnership work across the borough, across the range of services, and across a range of boroughs, that’s linking in and sharing expertise and resources (F, Community Sport Development Lead, 20YE).

Two aspects of collaborative working were identified by the interviewees: knowledge exchange, and partnership approaches.

Knowledge exchange

The opportunity for knowledge exchange between different sport coaches and public health professionals was central to successful partnerships and for sustained delivery of community sport for health outcomes:

The knowledge exchange was powerful for me because I could see there’s a lot of opportunity …for communities to bind themselves together by way of sport, and to give those people a healthy option in order to live a better life (M, Community Sport Coach, 10YE). that knowledge exchange workshop…it was the first time I came into contact with some of those people who did those various jobs. There was the health trainers…I didn’t even know they existed to be honest! So it was interesting to find out how they work with their clients and maybe if they’re looking to refer them to like organisations such as ourselves where they can do regular exercise then there’s maybe a partnership (M, Community Sport Coach, 5YE).

The challenges of promoting public health through community sport, and developing more systematic, collaborative and larger scale working relationships between community sport and local health agencies, were recognised:

Physical activity is a core area in public health. Sport - I think it’s very relevant …for me it’s a new role and the problem is that sports clubs can sometimes be a bit cliquey… you’ve got those added complexities…confidence…what to wear…not knowing anyone. But, having said that, you know, then sports clubs can have quite a nice social side, which gives another added dimension to people and makes them feel part of a community and to have something additional that they can engage with in a really positive way, but it’s just how that happens and how you get to that point (F, Community Sport Commissioner, 10YE).

However, the significance of HASE planning and training activities in enabling partnership working between public health professionals and community sport coaches for health outcomes dominated the views:

I was hesitant but I did learn a lot …I am going to work together with the Hounslow Homes project now (F, Community sport coach, 20YE). I’ve now got a relationship with Integrated Neurological Services and we’re working on developing and delivering a programme (F, Physical Activity Manager and Sport Coach Commissioner, 8YE). My coaches are understanding more about the health agenda and people within health are understanding more about the positivity of doing sport and physical activity as well…local connections worked really well (M, Senior Community Sport Manager and Sport Coach, 15YE).

Partnerships, pathways for recruitment and promoting sport for health

Partnership working in public health commonly involves strategies for bringing people together and enabling engagement, making pathways for recruitment and issues of promotion and communication key. A core ambition for commissioners, managers and sport coaches in this study was for the development of a referral system for community sport activities, based on existing referral approaches in public health that could develop a partnership between public health and community sport in working with inactive communities:

I think that going forward we’re trying to engage a large amount of inactive people, what would work well is referrals into a programme. Self-referrals or GPs or health trainers are a key to referring to community sport. And then also there’s that knowledge exchange from sports clubs, coaching professionals and volunteers, to understand how health professionals do their work ….and help them signpost to us (M, Director, Community Health Organisation, 8YE). I feel that there needs to be an agreed way forward in the whole Borough… for a referral process…recognising and going out to physical activity deliverers so if in public health you’re sitting there doing your individual target sheet with your client, they want to get fit, they have mobility issues, they’re over 60 or whatever, refer them to me, contact me (F, Physical Activity Project Coordinator, 3YE).

Sport coaches and those involved in commissioning community sport identified established public health strategies, theoretical approaches and pathways to recruitment as relevant to the work of sport coaches:

my starting point..for community sport …would be around NICE guidance that clearly states there’s an evidenced way of doing things…quite complex and requires a certain skill base ….but actually when people have done that work it’s a lot easier and we need sport delivery teams to know about giving advice and motivating people take part (F, Community Sport Commissioner, and Sports Coach 10YE). have sport coaches understand behaviour change …advising and motivating …is quite important (M, Commissioner, 15YE).

A more formalised role for sport coaches in engaging and supporting inactive people to become active through community sport was identified:

you could see a role for a physical activity activator or sport champion …giving support to inactive people to get active … understanding everything, .helping decisions, signposting to relevant services (M, Director, Community Health Organisation, 8YE).

The common theme in discussions about recruiting and signposting to community sport was the idea of moving beyond traditional health promotion messages associated with exercise prescription to a focus on knowledge and understanding about the role of sport for health and enabling people to take part:

(we have to) avoid very old health messages about exercise as something else they have to do. I think better ways of messaging are with some of the behaviour change ways …but through understanding people so it’s more for them (F, Community Sport Commissioner, 10YE)

Principal findings

This study recognised that engaging inactive people in sport lies outside sports coaches previous experience and aimed to equip them for this new role. All interviewees agreed that formal training via the RSPH Level 2 Award was a key ingredient for increasing sports coaches’ knowledge and understanding about public health. Bespoke workshops on targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people to community sport allowed coaches to develop their skills and knowledge and maximise the potential for raising physical activity levels in their work. Public involvement was also unanimously viewed as essential to better understanding of the barriers and facilitators to sport for diverse community groups. Moreover, it was identified as a way to understand better and attempt to resolve the complex personal and social experiences that mitigate against taking part. Engaging potential participants in the design of community sports projects was found to be important in appropriately tailoring community sport programmes. Public involvement allowed a focus on collective ownership of the content and delivery of community sport and was considered central to successful participant engagement. On-going opportunities for knowledge exchange between sport coaches and public health professionals was recognised as a pathway to sharing best practice in identifying, supporting and empowering inactive people to become more active. A more formal role for sport coaches in delivering community sport to increase levels of physical activity was articulated as important by our interviewees.

Overall, the need for partnerships between local public health and community sport sectors was advocated for successful service delivery of community sport for inactive people. Yet, the significant challenges of promoting public health through community sport were identified. Overcoming the negative perceptions of sport and addressing the problems of ensuring more systematic, collaborative and larger scale working relationships between community sport and public health organisations were identified.

Contribution to knowledge

The findings support the work that has identified sports coaches as potential community assets, helping local communities to address public health concerns around raising levels of physical activity [ 12 , 21 ]. In addition, the study adds to and develops further the conclusions of other studies which contend that sports coaches have a wider role than the teaching of sport skills to play in individual and community development of life skills [ 33 ], positive social behaviours [ 34 ], and supporting mental health [ 35 ]. While others have identified that sports coaches are not routinely trained in public health or the needs of inactive populations [ 21 ], this study shows that with the right training and partnership arrangements sports coaches have the potential to identify inactive people and engage and support them in tailored community sport programmes. They can, therefore, offer both a complementary and additional service in public health behaviour change broadly, one which is typically linked with the work of GPs or practice nurses [ 16 , 17 , 22 ]. The processes by which sports coaches in this study engaged and supported inactive people to take part in community sport reflects the significance of strategies reported in the wider literature which seek to develop understandings of complex and diverse personal and social experiences which make it difficult for people to participate including youth [ 36 ], age and ageing [ 37 ], disability [ 38 ], gender [ 39 ], sexual orientation [ 40 ], socio-economic status [ 41 ] and the environment [ 42 ] and crucially the intersections of such socio-cultural, environmental and individual issues. Pedagogical implications for coaches are revealed in this study. Supporting inactive people to become involved in community sport for health requires learning in practice and our findings indicate the salience of developing innovative health-related pedagogical skills and knowledge for the coaching workforce [ 43 ]. This also requires recognition of the complex reality of designing and delivering sport for inactive people and a more innovative approach to coaching; one that is not solely based on competencies but recognises the need to build, enhance and apply different skills and knowledge in reaching and engaging diverse groups of inactive people with a range of health and wellbeing needs in community sport [ 44 ]. This study illustrates the importance for researchers and practitioners, of developing theoretical and applied work that moves beyond established behaviour change approaches to physical activity to consider complex everyday relationships, and develop knowledge and understanding about the challenges of and best practice in empowering people to take part in community sport for health and wellbeing. It also illustrates the scope for drawing on work from the social sciences that provides deeper understandings of social diversity in sport and physical activity which can be applied in supporting those who find it most difficult to take part [ 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. These findings support those from studies that have argued for public involvement in community health projects to improve service quality, programme relevance, participant engagement and satisfaction, and health outcomes [ 49 ]. The present study also reinforces the potential in co-design approaches for ensuring that the needs of all stakeholders are addressed and that there is shared ownership and responsibility for project outcomes [ 50 , 51 ]. The findings support calls for workforce development, knowledge exchange and partnership approaches in the community sport sector to reflect public health concerns connected to raising physical activity levels [ 22 , 52 ]. It is emphasised that there remain challenges in overcoming negative perceptions of sport and in scaling up public health and community sport partnerships for population level change in physical activity.

Strengths and weaknesses

The study was part of a rigorous mixed methods study design for which there is a published protocol. The use of one interviewer provided some consistency in questioning and the sample included a diverse range of stakeholders centrally involved in community sport coaching or the management and commissioning of coaching. Interviews were conducted by the project lead who was involved in other aspects of the research providing some consistency and a systematic approach to data collection and analysis throughout the project.

The sample was self-selecting which can create some bias in the data. One coach did not attend the knowledge exchange workshop due to other work-related commitments and may have had an experience and views on that aspect of the training which could have affected the findings.

Implications for practice and research

Sport coaches have a role in designing and delivering complex community sport interventions for increasing physical activity and improving health. However, there is a need to understand how the knowledge and skill set of this workforce can be advanced for them to realise their potential as community resources in public health. This study has identified that it is possible to build capacity for delivering sport for health programmes by training sports coaches in public health, building locally specific knowledge about inactive communities through public involvement strategies, facilitating cross-sector knowledge exchange and encouraging partnership working between sport and public health sector experts. There is an increasing focus on community sport delivery for public health outcomes. Such delivery is complex and there is a need for research to focus on developing the evidence base on the processes involved in sport coach delivery and the impact of sport coaches on the successes, impacts and outcomes of interventions to support intervention design. It is equally important that findings of such research are disseminated in useful and useable ways, and in varied forms to different stakeholders and user groups so they can capitalise on and use the evidence in their policy and practice work.

Conclusions

Complex community sport interventions have the potential to engage inactive people to increase physical activity for health. Such interventions are likely to be delivered by sport coaches whose knowledge and expertise in public health and recruiting inactive people to sport is partial. This study has shown that with the right training, sport coaches can develop and apply their knowledge and understanding of public health and their skills in targeting, recruiting and retaining inactive people to community sport. The findings emphasise the importance of public involvement in supporting engagement of inactive people in community sport. In addition, the study has shown that through knowledge exchange between the community sport and public health sectors, there is potential for reciprocal partnership arrangements to develop that could further equip sport coaches with the knowledge and skills to design and implement community sport and potentially develop population level interventions for increasing physical activity, reducing inactivity and improving public health.

Abbreviations

Community Sport and Physical Activity Network

The Health and Sport Engagement Projects

London Borough of Hounslow

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The study was funded through Sport England’s Get Healthy Get Active Award URN 2012021352.

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LM, TK, AN, JF-R made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data in the Health and Sport Engagmeent Project. LM, TK, AN and JF-R have been involved in drafting the manuscript and revising it critically for important intellectual content. LM, TK, AN and JF-R have given final approval of the version to be published and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

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Ethical approval for the interviews was granted through the ethics award for the HASE project overall. Participants received detailed written participant information and gave written consent to participate. Consent was clarified verbally at the start of the interviews. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw at any time, without penalty and to their right to anonymity and confidentiality. This study was approved by Brunel University Research Ethics Committee, Division of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (reference RE33–12).

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Mansfield, L., Kay, T., Anokye, N. et al. A qualitative investigation of the role of sport coaches in designing and delivering a complex community sport intervention for increasing physical activity and improving health. BMC Public Health 18 , 1196 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6089-y

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Risk and Protective Factors for Bullying in Sport: A Scoping Review

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• Lisa Kalina 1 ,
• Brendan T. O’Keeffe   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4590-3460 2 ,
• Siobhán O’Reilly 3 &
• Louis Moustakas   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3388-4407 4  

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The aim of the current study was to examine risk and protective factors related to bullying in sport. Adopting the methodological approach outlined by Arksey and O’Malley (International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8(1):19–32,  2005 ), 37 articles met the inclusion criteria. A consistent definition of bullying could not be identified in the publications examined, and several articles ( n  = 8) did not explicitly define bullying. The most frequent risk factor identified was an individual’s social background ( n  = 9). Negative influence of coaches ( n  = 5), level of competition ( n  = 5), lack of supportive club culture ( n  = 5) and issues in locker rooms ( n  = 4) were among the most commonly cited risk factors for bullying in sport settings. Preventative policies were cited as the most common method to reduce the incidence of bullying ( n  = 13). Contextually tailored intervention programmes ( n  = 5) were also noted as a key protective factor, particularly for marginalised groups, including athletes with disabilities or members of the LGBTQ+ community. The need for sport-specific bullying prevention education was highlighted by 10 of the articles reviewed. In summary, the current review accentuates the range of risk and protective factors associated with sport participation. Furthermore, the need for educational training programmes to support coaches in addressing and preventing bullying within sport settings is emphasised.

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Bullying is a complex and multi-layered issue that crosses from childhood to adulthood and is a continuing challenge in education, workplace and recreation settings (Fisher & Dzikus, 2017 ). Although there remains considerable debate regarding the definition of the concept, Olweus’ ( 1993 ) definition has retained some support (Jewett et al., 2020 ). Olweus ( 1993 , p. 8) defines bullying as an ‘intentional, negative action which inflicts injury and discomfort on another’. According to Olweus ( 1993 ), bullying is characterised by an imbalance of power between victim and perpetrator as well as by repeated bullying behaviours. The phenomenon of bullying in education and workplace settings has received extensive scholarly attention (Campbell & Bauman, 2018 ; Jimerson et al., 2009 ; Zapf et al., 2020 ). However, research on bullying outside school and workplace settings is relatively scarce (Evans et al., 2016 ). One such context is sport settings, and researchers have suggested bullying in such contexts may present its own unique features (Kerr et al., 2016 ). Kerr et al. ( 2016 ) suggest that bullying can occur due to teasing behaviours carried out for ‘entertainment purposes’, which may not carry a clear intent to harm, such as ‘banter’ or ‘locker room talk’. Recent high-profile cases of bullying in elite sport (see CNN, 2022 , 2023 ) have demonstrated that, even at an elite level, sporting organisations are not prepared to cope with issues such as marginalisation and exclusion that may be considered both precursors and sources of bullying. Indeed, bullying on sports teams may have particular implications for participants, given the importance of interconnectedness and interdependence of team members for a sense of cohesion and performance outcomes (Kleinert et al., 2012 ). Bullying research and the widespread adoption of practical approaches are scarce (Newman et al., 2022 ). Fekkes et al. ( 2005 ) reported that almost one-third of bullying experiences occur beyond school and workplace settings, indicating a need to broaden the scope of research and consider bullying in recreation and sport contexts.

Sports, particularly team sports, often involve competition and aggressive interaction and some research has highlighted higher levels of bullying within the team sport context (MacPherson, 2018 ; Marracho et al., 2021 ; Vveinhardt & Fominiene, 2020 ). At times, in the heat of competition, it can be challenging for participants to distinguish between deliberately hurtful actions and those inherent to the competitive nature of the game (Nery et al., 2019 ). As a consequence, bullying in terms of hurtful behaviours, both physical and verbal, can end up becoming an accepted and expected norm that is intrinsic to particular sports, and such behaviour is often informed by coaches (Vveinhardt et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, the source of bullying behaviour is not always restricted to participants in an opposing team. Emerging evidence indicates that the source is often from participants on the same team or even a coach (Evans et al., 2016 ). As such, coaches in particular play a crucial role in reducing or addressing bullying. Sport coaches are not only expected to support sport development, but also to provide a fun, positive and safe team environment while also actively fostering personal (life skill) development (Čujko et al., 2020 ; Gilbert & Trudel, 2004 ). Nonetheless, despite the growing awareness of bullying in sport and recreation settings, there remains limited programmes for coaches aimed at heightening sensitivity about bullying, preventing and identifying bullying situations and intervening effectively (Shannon, 2013 ; Stefaniuk & Bridel, 2018 ).

The prevalence of bullying appears to differ significantly across countries (Modecki et al., 2014 ), and estimates regarding its prevalence vary greatly depending on the context and the measurement tool used to gather the data (Evans et al., 2016 ). For instance, data from the USA indicate that about one out of every four school children has experienced bullying (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022 ). In a European context, Craig et al. ( 2009 ) reported differences in prevalence ranged from lows of 8.6% and 4.8% in Sweden to highs of 45.2% and 35.8% in Lithuania, among boys and girls, respectively. However, the assessment of this phenomenon among participants in different contexts and countries, using measurement tools that lack validity and reliability, emphasises the need for caution when making such comparisons (Vveinhardt et al., 2019 ). As noted by Bachand ( 2017 ), many researchers have used one-item measures of bullying, which may be insufficient given the intricacy of bullying-related behaviours. Despite concerns regarding the accuracy of tools to measure prevalence, it is abundantly clear that bullying is commonplace in sporting contexts, with a range of adverse health and psychosocial consequences going far beyond the context within which the sport occurs (Shannon, 2013 ). Via a sample of 1440 Lithuanian sport participants between 16 and 29 years old, the prevalence of bullying within different types of sports was measured by Vveinhardt and Fominiene ( 2020 ) in individual sports (9.8%), combat sports (8.5%) and team sports (7.3%). In their analysis, athletes experienced most bullying actions in combat sports (20%) while almost half less in team sports (10.8%) as well as in individual sports (10.1%). Notwithstanding challenges with measurement and contextual factors, the disparity in rates between countries indicates that contrasting cultural and social norms, and varying approaches in the implementation of bullying-related policies or programmes, may significantly influence the prevalence of bullying behaviour (Fisher & Dzikus, 2017 ). For instance, higher conformity to hegemonic masculinity norms may enhance the perceived acceptability of bullying (Steinfeldt et al., 2012 ).

Little attention has been given to the social, environmental and situational factors in sport contexts that may influence bullying behaviour (Vveinhardt et al., 2019 ). Therefore, risk factors or protective factors associated with both the perpetrator and victim are not well established. Some authors, such as Shannon ( 2013 ), reported that the culture of a sport organisation, as exemplified through the values, attitudes, beliefs and practices of administrators and staff, might serve as an important buffer to bullying. Other studies likewise highlight the potential role of contextual factors or individual relationships (e.g. Evans et al., 2016 ; Newman et al., 2022 ). Beyond these first attempts, however, there still remains a need to more systematically identify risk and protective factors, which in turn can directly help tailor and inform the development of awareness or education programmes targeted at sport coaches.

As such, the following scoping review aimed to examine how bullying is defined and measured in sport-related literature and to establish commonalities in both risk and protective factors associated with bullying. This could serve to inform sporting organisations to foster more inclusive environments and limit the negative consequences of bullying. In addition, a specific focus of this review was to examine the role coaches play in preventing or facilitating bullying.

The following scoping review took place against the backdrop of the BEFORE project. A four-partner, pan-European action, this project aims to review current policies and practices to develop educational training programmes to support coaches in addressing and preventing bullying within sport settings, funded by Erasmus+ (2021-1-IE01-KA220-VET-000034749). To effectively grasp current understandings and experiences around bullying in sport, and develop evidence-based educational programmes, a scoping review was undertaken to map out crucial information related to the subject. Indeed, scoping reviews can be valuable in identifying evidence around a given topic, documenting trends and clarifying concepts (Munn et al., 2018 ).

For the following, we adopt the methodological approach outlined by Arksey and O’Malley ( 2005 ), which is a widely accepted approach for scoping reviews and has been adopted by numerous reviews in the areas of bullying and sport-related social issues more generally (e.g. Clarke et al., 2021 ; Quinlan et al., 2014 ). Our scoping review began in March 2022 and took approximately 11 months. The review followed six steps, namely, (1) identifying the research questions; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data and (5) collating, summarising and reporting the results. A sixth step, consultation with relevant stakeholders, was also implemented to add rigour and validate findings. In the following sub-sections, we document each of these steps individually.

Identification of the Research Questions

In line with the educational objectives of the BEFORE project, the authors and project members developed a set of research questions to guide our search strategy. Following recommendations, we ensured that our questions were not so narrow as to limit the analytical process and broad enough to capture all relevant literature. As such, in accordance with the aims of our project, we developed three research questions to direct our review: (1) how is bullying defined in sport-related literature; (2) what risk or protective factors are identified concerning bullying and (3) what role do coaches play in preventing or facilitating bullying?

Determination of Relevant Studies

A search strategy was developed and reviewed by the authors and all project members, including during the project launch meeting in March 2022. As a result, we selected several multi-disciplinary and thematically relevant databases to conduct our search and agreed on relevant search terms and related inclusion criteria.

A final search string was chosen (TS = (“sport*” AND “bully*”)) to balance the extent and relevance of results as well as overall feasibility. Given the more niche nature of the topic, we opted for a simple combination of two broad search terms to obtain a wide range of potentially relevant results. Furthermore, as part of our research question concerned specifically the definition of bullying, we opted to exclude potentially connected terminology such as peer victimisation or harassment. As such, only the two mentioned terms have been included to ensure a feasible number of articles were retrieved from our search for review. Numerous databases, including the Web of Science Core Collection, KCI-Korean Journal Database, MEDLINE ® , Russian Science Citation Index, SciELO Citation Index, SportDISCUS, Sociology Source Ultimate and PsyIndex, were used. Via in-built online filters, searches were limited to peer-reviewed journal publications published in English between 2000 and 2022. All searches were conducted on April 12, 2022. Tables 1 and 2 present the search strategy and inclusion criteria, respectively.

Study Selection

Covidence software was used to manage and streamline the process of abstract and full-text screening. Covidence allows researchers to upload search results, automatically scans for duplicates and coordinates multi-user screening of articles, thus facilitating our work as a multi-national, decentralised research team. Two project members reviewed each abstract and subsequent full text independently. A unanimous decision was required for texts to progress to full-text screening and, later, to full-text inclusion. In situations of conflicting decisions, the authorship group met to discuss and resolve those conflicts. Two key factors drove full-text inclusion.

Firstly, texts were required to make explicit reference to the term bullying. Related concepts, such as violence, maltreatment or abuse, were excluded. Though admittedly connected, including these concepts would have inflated the review and included behaviours and perspectives that, arguably, go beyond what is typically associated with bullying. Secondly, only texts concerning the prevalence, experience or prevention of bullying in the club, community or extracurricular sport context were included. Though we recognise that bullying and sport frequently occur within educational contexts, most coaches targeted by the BEFORE project work within community or club contexts. Those contexts likely face different dynamics than formal educational settings (Kerr et al., 2016 ), and it was necessary for the project that those contexts be adequately and fully reflected in our results.

Charting the Data

The next stage of the process involved charting and data extraction from the included studies. Each project partner was responsible for charting a segment of the included studies, and the authorship group reviewed the final data table. We used Google Sheets and charted bibliographic, methodological and bullying-specific information for the included studies. Regarding bibliographic and methodological information, we collated titles, author(s), year, journal name, country of study, study design, sample descriptions, data collection methods and theories employed. As it relates to bullying, we documented the definition employed within the article, the setting in which the bullying took place, the bullying relationship (i.e. athlete-athlete, coach-athlete) and the risk and protective factors documented in the study.

Collating and Reporting Results

Both frequency analysis and deductive coding were used to collate and report the results. The variables extracted for the frequency analysis included publication year, data origin (country), journal, methodology, study population and sport. Deductive coding allowed us to identify and summarise the relationships and protective and risk factors highlighted by the texts. Based on the coding results, we then conducted a frequency analysis to document the occurrence of these relationships and factors.

Consultation

Though consultation is presented here as the final step, consultation took place throughout this research. The entire project consortium, which includes an anti-bullying NGO, a pan-European organisation and two universities, was engaged in the review’s design, implementation and analysis. Multiple members from each project partner contributed to designing, reviewing and implementing the proposed search strategy and inclusion criteria. Following the collation and writing of the results, these partners reviewed the extracted data and critically appraised the overall analysis in this text.

In total, 391 studies were identified, 61 duplicates were removed, and 330 studies were screened. After screening, 231 studies were excluded, with 99 studies being assessed for eligibility. Of these 99, 62 studies were excluded for the reasons noted in Fig.  1 , including wrong publication format ( n  = 25), wrong setting ( n  = 20) and lack of bullying focus ( n  = 8). After our inclusion criteria were applied, 37 articles examining bullying in sport met all criteria for inclusion in this study. An overview of the retained articles is provided in Table  3 .

Flow chart for bullying in sport scoping review

Publication Year

Though our search parameters extended back to 2000, no texts were included before 2012. As evidenced in Fig.  2 , articles on bullying in sports have increased since 2019, with 26 out of 37 publications published from 2019 to 2022.

Number of publications that examined bullying in sport, by year

In total, 31 different journals were included in the scoping review. Three publications were included in the journals Frontiers in Psychology , and a further two publications each were included in the journals Motricidade , International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology and Journal of Human Sport & Exercise as well as the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health .

Research Locations

Research data comes mostly ( n  = 35) from countries in the so-called West or ‘Global North’, characterised as Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. The other two studies come from Iran and Japan. Lithuania appears more frequently than the other Western countries ( n  = 8), followed by the USA ( n  = 6), Canada, Portugal, Spain and the UK ( n  = 4).

In terms of the different sports analysed, most studies focused on multiple sports ( n  = 21), including team sports (football/soccer, basketball, rugby) as well as individual sports (swimming, acrobatics, gymnastics or badminton). A total of 11 articles analysed one particular sport, with football/soccer being the most frequent ( n  = 6).

Definition of Bullying in Sport

A consistent definition of bullying could not be identified in the publications examined. Several journal articles ( n  = 8) did not explicitly define bullying. Most articles used definitions of bullying which included the terms ‘repeated/repeatedly’ ( n  = 11) or ‘intentional’ ( n  = 8). Three main parameters of bullying were identified by Vveinhardt et al. ( 2019 ) as bullying is repeated over time, involves an imbalance of power and may be verbal, physical, social or psychological. Concerning the different types of bullying, three journal articles differentiated between physical, verbal, social or cyberbullying. Different relationships between the perpetrator and the victim were identified in terms of bullying in sport. The selected journal articles differentiated between peer-to-peer bullying of athletes ( n  = 17), as well as coach-athlete ( n  = 9) or coach-coach bullying relationships ( n  = 1), with athlete-to-athlete bullying being the most common type of bullying relationship reported. Most papers analysed more than one specific relationship of bullying in their analysis, including athlete-athlete as well as the relationship between athletes and coaches ( n  = 12). A total of eight articles did not define the bullying relationship at all.

Risk Factors

Multiple risk factors of bullying can be identified in the articles. In general, sports participation increased the likelihood of being bullied for those on the margins. Five out of 37 papers underlined that participation in sports, team sports, interscholastic sports and contact sports increases the risk of being bullied. The most frequent risk factor identified was individual social backgrounds and how others interact with diverse individuals ( n  = 9). Thus, different identities related to gender, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity or health may lead to more bullying. For example, Ohlert et al. ( 2020 ) reported that gender differences were only evident for sexual violence, with female athletes showing higher prevalence estimates than male athletes, while Vveinhardt and Fominiene ( 2019 ) reported that male athletes are more aggressive physically, verbally or nonverbally than women.

A total of five articles identified the lack of a supportive culture as another risk factor of bullying, meaning that a lack of support for the individual athlete or/and a culture creating fear, discrimination, silence or conformity within the sport setting increases the risk of bullying (Baiocco et al., 2018 ; Jewett et al., 2020 ; Shannon, 2013 ).

Lack of supervision was identified as another risk factor in four studies. These sorts of risks relate to places or moments within the sporting context where a lack of supervision or structure is seen as creating opportunities for bullying (e.g. unstructured time, changing rooms). Locker rooms were identified by several studies ( n  = 4) as the most conflict-prone place. Due to the intimate atmosphere and the absence of adult surveillance, locker rooms can foster a climate of fear and competition (Nikolaou & Crispin, 2022 ).

In the sport and bullying context, five papers found that the negative influence of coaches present a risk of bullying, as coaches have a high influence on the individual athlete as well as the negative, sometimes even toxic, atmosphere in the sport setting (e.g. Driessens, 2015 ; Rios et al., 2022 ; Vveinhardt et al., 2017 ; Vveinhardt & Fominiene, 2019 ; Weuve et al., 2014 ). However, some authors argued that the role of team managers and coaches is not yet fully understood as it relates to bullying prevention (Newman et al., 2022 ; Vveinhardt et al., 2019 ). In addition to coaches, external influences such as parents or family members were described as another risk. As Yabe et al. ( 2021 , p. 191) state, ‘it is necessary that parents are aware of their roles in youth sport to make appropriate mutual communication between parents and coaches, which could lead to a more comfortable atmosphere for young athletes’. Table 4 provides a frequency count overview of the most commonly reported risk factors identified during the review.

Protective Factors

Overall, 27 out of 37 articles reported on protective factors in their studies. Protective measures or policies within the sport or club setting are the most common factor in preventing bullying ( n  = 13). Studies with contextually tailored intervention programmes reduced the likelihood of experiencing bullying victimisation and created more positive sport experiences for all participants (Driessens, 2015 ; Haegele et al., 2020 ; Newman et al., 2022 ; Storr et al., 2022 ). The papers showed that especially marginalised groups, e.g. athletes with disabilities (Haegele et al., 2020 ) or members of the LGBT+ community (Baiocco et al., 2018 ), benefit from these types of programmes.

Besides programmes targeting the athletes, the need for educational programmes (e.g. coach development workshops and educational programmes for teachers and parents) has been identified by multiple papers ( n  = 10). The education of coaches, parents and stakeholders is one key factor in addressing and preventing bullying (Mattey et al., 2014 ; Newman et al., 2022 ). According to Mattey et al. ( 2014 ), educational workshops can increase awareness of the effects of bullying and help athletes, coaches and other stakeholders to create safe, bullying-free environments. Furthermore, some papers ( n  = 5) underlined that access to extracurricular or sports activities helps develop participants’ confidence and skills and, subsequently, reduces the risk of disruptive behaviour (Haegele et al., 2020 ; Storr et al., 2022 ).

In addition, building up internal skills or characteristics of individuals such as resilience or emotional competence have been identified to foster anti-bullying behaviour (Baiocco et al., 2018 ; Storr et al., 2022 ; Weuve et al., 2014 ). Table 5 provides a frequency count overview of the most prominent protective factors identified during the review.

Discussion, Limitations and Implications

Through a scoping review of 37 articles, we have aimed to expose the current status of research regarding bullying in sport. In particular, we have sought to highlight the understanding of bullying within the existing research, as well as document the relationships, risks and protective factors related to bullying in sport. Before discussing the implications of our findings, it is worth pausing on some of the limitations associated with our work. Firstly, though not a limitation per se, it is crucial to remember that our review focuses exclusively on sport in the club, community, recreational and extracurricular settings. We do not focus on bullying in the context of formal physical education, though we suspect this is a further area of worthwhile inquiry. Secondly, our review focused only on peer-reviewed, English-language journal articles. These restrictions limit the potential results, and a multi-lingual and multi-format review may have yielded different outcomes. Having said that, we can nonetheless establish a few clear trends and potential future directions based on the results presented here.

Conceptually, the body of literature presented here does not use one specific definition of bullying, with numerous studies even taking the term somewhat for granted and failing to provide any form of working definition. This ambiguity around a standard definition is perhaps unsurprising given the ‘ongoing definitional issues of the word bullying’ (Hellström et al., 2021 , p. 4). When the term is defined, however, there is a fairly clear trend towards understanding bullying as something both repeated and intentional, and that can take the form of verbal, physical or emotionally abusive behaviour. Seismic developments in information and communication technology have resulted in the forms and platforms of bullying inevitably changing (Hellström et al., 2021 ). Indeed, while discrimination has always been a problem in sport, the growth of social media has exacerbated the issue (Kearns et al., 2023 ) and is an area in need of further research based on the studies examined in the current review.

Likewise, there is great variety in the risk and protective factors associated with bullying in the retained papers. Most strikingly, the characteristics of the sporting context seem to play a determining role as it relates to the risk of bullying. For one, the type of sport is relevant. Team sports seem to have a higher prevalence of bullying than combat or individual sports. According to the study by Marracho et al. ( 2021 ), the prevalence of bullying (victims, bullies and bystanders) was 26.7% in team sports, 19.1% in individual sports and 23.1% in combat sports, with no significant differences between different sports concerning the prevalence of bullying behaviours. Other studies included here echo these findings, though further meta-analysis would be needed to establish deeper insights concerning prevalence statistics (Marracho et al., 2021 ; Vveinhardt & Fominiene, 2020 ). Relatedly, higher levels of competition, especially at elite sport levels, can be identified as another sport-specific risk factor. The unique power of competition as a distinct risk factor in sport settings was highlighted here in only two studies (Marracho et al., 2021 ; Shannon, 2013 ), though literature concerning abuse or harassment in sport also confirms this as a risk factor (e.g. Bjørnseth & Szabó, 2018 ). The pressure to win, as well as the competitive environment in team or individual sport settings, increases the likelihood of bullying behaviours.

Regardless of the type of sport or competition level, it is also clear that the environment plays a crucial role in the prevalence of bullying. Bullying thrives in situations of power imbalances, and these imbalances are often made worse through environments that reinforce various forms of discrimination. Gender, disability and ethnicity have all been identified as risk factors, though we use this term carefully as we do not mean to imply that these differences are the causes of bullying. Rather, the real risk comes from attitudes and environments that enable and condone discriminatory behaviours and bullying. For instance, some authors identify toxic masculinity in team sports such as football/soccer or volleyball as a risk factor (Mattey et al., 2014 ). Conversely, some articles highlight that participating in sport can increase personal confidence, especially for people with disabilities, while increasing access to sports may be a lower-cost alternative to many bullying intervention programmes, with the added benefit of increases in health and wellness, human capital and peer network effects already associated with sports participation and physical activity (Nikolaou & Crispin, 2022 ).

This shows that the sporting context and environment do not emerge independently but are primarily shaped by the individuals organising and delivering sporting activities. This is reflected in the fact that the role of coaches is listed as both a protective and risk factor. For instance, Baiocco et al. ( 2018 ) underline that the role of coaches can have a positive influence on preventing bullying. Coaches may provide a positive and supportive environment, partially protecting athletes from the psychological effects of unsupportive, bullying environments.

Given the crucial role of coaches in creating a supportive environment and reducing the risk of bullying, it is essential to consider the kind of resources and education coaches need to fulfil this vital role. Sport psychologists Smith and Smoll ( 2012 ) created guidelines to support coaches, including clear examples and real stories to promote leadership behaviour and life skills development as well as coach-parent relationships, aiming to prevent bullying behaviours. In their recent study, Ríos and Ventura ( 2022 ) highlight that prevention strategies related to promoting a positive climate among athletes are the most important factor to tackle bullying. As coaches themselves had little knowledge on bullying in general, more specific training is relevant. As toxic and discriminatory attitudes often reinforce bullying behaviours, coaches must be equipped with the tools to understand and tackle discrimination at its roots. To that end, this implies systemically integrating anti-bullying education within coach development curricula, as well as ensuring that coaches obtain adequate training and support to implement safe sport guidelines and principles (see Moustakas et al., 2023 ). Any such education should also be responsive to the experiences and realities of coaches as it relates to bullying, as the role of coaches in this area is not yet fully understood (Newman et al., 2022 ; Vveinhardt et al., 2017 ). In particular, understanding how coaches may experience, witness and deal with bullying are valuable areas for future exploration. Elsewhere, it is also crucial for any anti-bullying curriculum to consider and develop synergies with educational approaches in other related areas. The goal here is not to overload coaches with new, burdensome training requirements but to help them promote a safe, fun, inclusive sporting environment. As such, anti-bullying education should closely align with and complement educational materials related to areas such as intercultural education (e.g. Moustakas et al., 2022 ) or anti-discrimination (e.g. Kavoura et al., 2016 ).

Overall, this is the key message from our findings. Coaches are central to mediating many of the risks present within the sporting context, including establishing an inclusive atmosphere, supervising risk-prone areas and dealing with bullying cases as they arrive. Yet it is also clear that sport coaches do not receive nearly enough training and support to fulfil this crucial role, and future work must urgently address this need by developing relevant curricula and enacting the necessary support structures.

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Open access funding provided by FH Kufstein Tirol - University of Applied Sciences. The research leading to these results received funding from the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme Grant Agreement No. 2021-1-IE01-KA220-VET-000034749.

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Helena mesquita.

3 Centro Interdisciplinar de Ciências Sociais da Universidade Nova (CISC.NOVA), 1070-312 Lisboa, Portugal

Sergio J. Ibáñez

Associated data.

Not applicable.

This study aims to synthesize and understand the qualitative and empirical evidence previously published on adapted sports career development. This systematic literature review also aimed at developing a conceptual model of the training and career path of adapted sports coaches. The research was carried out through the following databases: PubMed, Erid, EBSCO, Web of Science and Scopus. We selected nine qualitative studies according to the specific eligibility criteria. Data extraction was carried out independently by different authors, including the assessment of the methodological quality of the articles. We developed a conceptual model composed of four descriptive subjects (adapted sport option; perception of training athletes in adapted sports; development of the adapted sports coach’s learning; adapted sports coach reality) about the adapted sports coach’s pathway and added three analytical subjects about the difficulties, opportunity and reality of adapted sports. The conceptual model suggests inclusion of practical activity programs, the specificities of related contents with the adapted modalities, and observation in a real context are fundamental.

1. Introduction

Sports are an activity that follows a structure that is perfectly defined by technical, tactical and psychosocial rules and dimensions, where coaches play a fundamental role for athletes who view them as leaders and experts [ 1 ]. In this respect, the coach’s role is to optimize and maximize the potential of the team and/or the athlete [ 2 ]. In the context of adapted sport, coaches have to adapt their knowledge and skills using a combination of innovation, intuition and creativity in order to adjust training to the specific needs of the athletes [ 3 ].

Studies carried out on coach’s training have been an important ally in the dissemination of knowledge, namely what coaches need to obtain in order to effectively perform the job [ 4 ], but the limitation of investigations of primary studies and revision in the adapted sport (AS) area is evident [ 5 ].

Irwin et al. [ 6 ] defend the idea that the identification of the trainer’s knowledge is the conceptual mechanism for their development and is a fundamental process in their evolution. For the trainers, the most significant sources of knowledge are practical learning (mentoring), since it helps them to reflect on the practical aspects of the job. Werthner and Trudel [ 7 ] further specify the subject matter, reinforcing the concept that studies on trainers’ learning processes are fundamental elements in developing more effective work, concluding that the process is idiosyncratic, having to consider both formal and informal knowledge.

Thus Ibáñez et al. [ 8 ] stress the need for further research to delve more deeply into the theory and practice of the coach’s role. In this context, identification of the knowledge of coaches [ 6 ] and their learning process [ 7 ] are paradigms which, according to the authors mentioned, lack greater scientific depth and therefore present important concerns for the production of a systematic literature review.

In view of the abovementioned arguments, this research is revealing in both formal and informal contexts. From a formal perspective, Haegele et al. [ 9 ] conducted a study on research trends in adapted physical activity between the years 2004 and 2013, where they warned that the analyzed research lacks conceptual and theoretical structures. They identified in their review that research on adapted sport was characterized by descriptive non-intervention and group-design studies. They underlined the importance of these studies, as the scope of adapted physical activity should be considered by high-impact scientific sources to proliferate knowledge in the area of adapted sports. As for the informal relevance, the study is basic for both coaches and training institutions, since it is suggested that the contents of the training courses be reformulated to include additional resources [ 2 ].

Bentzen et al. [ 10 ] conducted a comprehensive review with the aim of enhancing the advancement of knowledge in this specific area by analyzing articles published between 1991 and 2018. The main objective of the study was to provide a broad perspective on the existing literature on adapted sports coaches. This specific research was concerned with characterizing the investigative design of the studies produced within the scope of adapted sports. These authors highlighted the bias of this research, which uses interviews to obtain information, and the prevalence of male coaches. In their study they identified that the three most frequently addressed topics in these studies are becoming a parasport coach, being a parasport coach, and general parasport coaching knowledge. They found that the formal training of coaches is limited, expensive and lacks specific content for coaching in adapted sport. In addition, they considered it important to develop a conceptual model of the effectiveness of coaching in adapted sport.

Given this prerogative and as a way to obtain a holistic perspective on the coach’s knowledge and relationship with the athletes, the model by Bloom et al. [ 11 ] suggests the 3 + 1 Cs [ 12 , 13 ], since this model allows the coach to adjust to the individual needs of the athletes. In conceptual terms, this model aims to measure the relationships between coaches and athletes on an emotional, cognitive and behavioral level. The four constructs underpinning this model are closeness, commitment, complementarity, and co-orientation [ 13 ]. Co-orientation is the factor that links the three previous constructs, as it is defined as the shared knowledge and understanding between coaches and athletes.

As far as is known, there is little research that deals specifically with the professional career of coaches working in adapted sport. Therefore, the aim was to make a systematic review to identify studies that analyze coaches in adapted sport. From this perspective, the lack of knowledge and specific training of professionals for dealing with disabled people [ 14 , 15 ] is an obstacle in the progression and development of the area of AS. This study aimed to synthesize and understand the qualitative and empirical evidence previously published about AS career development. In addition, this review also aimed at developing a conceptual model on the training and career path of adapted sports coaches (ASCs).

This systematic literature review was developed from the guidelines of Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative research (ENTREQ) [ 16 ]. In addition, the recommendations of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) [ 17 ] were also followed.

2.1. Eligibility Criteria

The following literary research strategy was used: searching for studies in different scientific databases (Pubmed, Eric, EBSCO, Web of Science, Scopus) using keywords associated with the defined eligibility criteria (sports and disability and coach). The time period analyzed was up to February 2020. The eligibility criteria for the studies were developed from the Sample, Phenomenon of Interest, Design, Evaluation and Research type (SPIDER), especially recommended for the synthesis of qualitative evidence [ 18 ]. Thus, the systematic review obeyed the consensus regarding the research, since this procedure is used in observational studies and allows the reviewers to establish an agreement before the observation is carried out [ 19 ]. The criteria are represented in Table 1 .

Development of a Search Strategy and Selection of Eligibility Criteria Based on the SPIDER Acronym.

2.2. Literary Research

The following literary research strategy was used: searching for studies in different scientific databases (PubMed, Eric, EBSCO, Web of Science, Scopus) using keywords associated with the defined eligibility criteria (“coach”; “knowledge”; “adapted sport” “Parasport coach”, “Para sport”, “disability sport”). The keywords of the study were developed from three areas: (1) coaches or related terms; (2) knowledge of the coach, and more specifically (3) in the area of AS. The keywords used were searched for in combination with each other. In addition, the literature reference lists of selected studies were consulted for the verification of other relevant studies. Data collection took place from 16 October 2019 to 26 February 2020, including all existing documents in which the keyword combination was identified up to the closing date of the study.

2.3. Selection of Studies

The studies were inserted into the EndNote software (Thompson Reuters, San Francisco, CA, USA), and the duplicates were removed through the “duplicates” function. After this procedural phase, the studies were selected through the following stages [ 20 ]: in the first stage, two reviewers, independently, selected the studies based on their titles. In case of doubt about their relevance to the goal of the study, they were included for the next stage. In the second stage, the abstracts of the included studies were analyzed. Disagreements about the exclusion and inclusion of the studies for the subsequent phase were resolved through the mediation of a third reviewer. In the final stage, the studies were read in full by two reviewers. Discrepancies about the inclusion of studies for the synthesis of the final evidence were resolved by consensus [ 19 ] among the three reviewers who participated in the previous phases. The studies were included in the final synthesis considering the defined eligibility criteria.

2.4. Data Extraction

The data were extracted by two independent reviewers. The following categories were considered: study characteristics; design; objective; data analysis and results/conclusions. In this way, the data from the selected articles were inserted in a table prepared to summarize the obtained information [ 21 ]. In addition, the quotations from the participants that are transcribed in the selected studies were also extracted in order to establish a more general understanding of the data [ 22 ]. At this stage, the discrepancies about the extracted data were resolved through the mediation of a third reviewer.

2.5. Quality Assessment

The assessment of the methodological quality of the selected studies was carried out through The Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) [ 23 ]. This instrument has 10 assessment items that are classified into: Yes; Can’t tell or No. Studies have been classified as “high quality” if they meet at least 8 of the 10 criteria, “medium quality” if they meet 5–7 of the criteria, and “low quality” if they meet 4 or less. The studies were independently evaluated by three reviewers. Disagreements concerning the classification of studies were resolved by the reviewers by consensus.

2.6. Data Analysis

A thematic synthesis [ 24 ] was carried out on the data extracted from the selected studies giving origin to descriptive topics. However, the synthesis was intended to go beyond a description of the data collected. From this perspective, analytical topics were developed from the descriptive ones that allowed the construction of new interpretations regarding the development of an ASC’s career, experimenting with the existing knowledge. At the formal level the thematic synthesis was developed in three phases. Peer debriefing was used to ensure the credibility of the data analysis [ 25 ]. Thus, during the investigation, periodic meetings were held with the research team to critically review the entire data analysis process. The first phase corresponded to the coding of the subjects of the studies included, independently allowing the description, synthesis and establishment of key concepts of each study. After this stage, the descriptive subjects were developed. In the first instance, the primary analysis was very close to the conclusions drawn from the studies included, so it was necessary to develop analytical subjects that allowed the goal of the study to be achieved [ 24 ]. The subjects were developed with the aim of guaranteeing their exclusivity and exhaustiveness [ 26 ]. All the procedures described above were prepared in the first instance by the first author, who made the thematic map. In a second phase, the thematic map was independently reviewed by two different reviewers and the disagreements existing in the thematic synthesis were resolved among the three reviewers by consensus [ 19 ].

3.1. Selection Process of Studies

Figure 1 presents an overview of the study selection process using the PRISMA flowchart. The initial search identified 49 titles in the database and 13 more relevant investigations were added for the review. A total of 62 records were identified. These data were exported to the reference database management software (EndNote), and any duplicates (47 references) were automatically deleted.

Study selection process using the PRISMA flowchart.

The remaining 47 articles were tracked according to the title and abstract, resulting in 34 studies being deleted from the database. In the final process the articles were fully read ( n = 13) and four studies were excluded because they did not meet the inclusion criteria.

3.2. Characteristics of Studies

Table 2 characterizes the studies included in the revision, all of them being investigations using a qualitative matrix. Most ( n = 7) are studies of Canadian origin, except for two, one relating to the USA and one to Australia. Regarding the characteristics of the studies, due to the particularities of the topic of the revision, information can be found on sample number ( n ); type of coach (TC); sport category (SC) and typology of disability (TD). The sample size varies between 1 and 45. It should be noted that four studies have exclusively men (m) trainers in the group of participants, four studies have participants of both genders and only one research has only women (f) trainers. All the studies took into account the selection of elite trainers and only two grouped elite trainers with beginners. In the sports aspects, the studies focused on individual ( n = 3) and team ( n = 5) modalities and one of the studies did not specify the modality. The type of disability is a subject which is not very characteristic, since a large part of the studies ( n = 7) either did not specify the pathology or addressed more than one type of disability. The in-depth interview was the most commonly used method, based on structured and semi-structured interviews. The semi-structured interview was the most used method for data collection ( n = 5), followed by both in-depth ( n = 2) and structured ( n = 2) interviews. In the analysis of the data, most investigations chose to use a thematic analysis ( n = 8).

Description of the characteristics of the included studies.

3.3. Assessment of the Study Quality

Table 3 shows the results of the paper quality coding system proposed by CASP, which is a qualitative evaluation tool. The CASP has 10 questions, which focus on each methodological aspect of the study being analyzed [ 23 ]. Each question is evaluated with a “yes” if the analyzed aspect is evident; “can’t tell” if the analyzed aspect is not clear; “no” if it is not consigned. According to this evaluation, the articles were classified as high quality when they score between 10 and 8 points, medium quality 7 to 5 points and low quality 4 to 0 points. In the present research most studies are classified [ 23 ].

Quality Appraisal of the Included Studies.

3.4. Thematic Analysis

Figure 2 formally demonstrates the process of designing the thematic synthesis which comprised four topics and 12 descriptive sub-topics. Furthermore, another three analytical topics and eight analytical sub-topics were established.

Conceptual Model of Career Development of Adapted Sports Coaches.

3.5. Descriptive Subjects

3.5.1. adapted sport option.

This subject is related to the choice and not to the AS. The coaches who make the career choice have influential factors to make this decision, namely previous experience with people with disabilities, family and/or academic experience and interest in the area. In addition to the premises mentioned, personal experiences are revealed in the choice, as they include a number of important aspects such as personal skills, having been an AS athlete, volunteer experiences in the area and experiences in overcoming barriers throughout life. The lack of option for AS is related to contextual factors and change. Contextual factors are related to the reasons why professionals have never sought this area of work, while the factor of change would imply an adaptation to a new reality. “ I don’t think anybody goes out and intentionally decides they’re going to become a coach for swimmers with a disability ” [ 27 ].

3.5.2. Perception of Training Athletes in Adapted Sports

Coaches who have prior knowledge of AS prefer to train in this specific area (positive bias). The selected studies refer to the neutral bias, which refers to trainers who have never thought about the AS topic, yet take on any challenge without reservation, “ Well, I kind of didn’t really think about it all that much before I did it, so when you talk about reservations, I wasn’t really all that conscious of them ” [ 34 ].

However, coaches do not only discriminate against positive factors in training athletes with AS, there are also several negative aspects associated with it: negative prejudice, stigma and lack of knowledge. Negative prejudice is seen as difficulties and barriers in exercising the role of the coach. Stigma is a more common phenomenon in elite coaches, since they are afraid of damaging their coaching career and also due to the fact that AS is still seen as an act of charity “[...] the way that it was presented was that only nice people would do that. So, you know, hard-nosed, ambitious coaches weren’t going to do coaching with disabilities, nice people do that ” [ 34 ]. The lack of knowledge is motivated by the lack of social interaction between people with and without disabilities, which causes a lack of knowledge about training, the morphological functioning of athletes, and difficulties in using appropriate terminology.

3.5.3. Development of the Adapted Sports Coach’s Learning

This topic includes the procedural phases that the ASC goes through in the construction of learning and, consequently, the development of their career. In this context, the ASCs develop their knowledge through three paths: theoretical, practical and reflection processes. At a theoretical level, the learning is done through formal procedures. At a practical level this is associated with non-formal and informal contexts. Regarding the non-formal perspective, this is considered as a facilitator of practical learning as it is acquired through participation in congresses, training camps and internships. As for the informal perspective, it is an essential help in the training, as it comes from the learning acquired with the tutors, and in the case of AS we have to consider the knowledge acquisition of athletes, parents, a multidisciplinary team, observation of the training and game as well as the observations of other coaches. The last way corresponds to the reflection, which aggregates three aspects common to all coaches and one specific one in the case of AS. In the general perspective there is the educational reflection, which allows the integration of formal learning contexts and the adaptation to the specificity of this sports area. The reflection with the peers brings together reflective processes with all the agents of the training, namely with the other trainers and athletes, whose interaction may occur before, during and after the training, and is manifested through observation processes (verbal or non-verbal). Reflection in depth summarizes the integration of new knowledge/learning that leads to the transformation of working contexts, i.e., “ coach talked about watching, questioning and then synthesizing important data before making changes to an athlete’s training program or equipment ” [ 33 ]. For the ASC, consideration should also be given to adapted thinking, which consists of integrating all learning content and adapting it to meet the specific needs of both athletes and sport.

The research included considers that there are five stages in the construction of the ASC’s career, which complete their journey from the initial stage to the carrying out of the task. At the beginning of the career, it is fundamental to develop the concept of learning to teach, which includes the period of the first contact with the AS, in order to start learning to train in a 2nd stage and which corresponds to the beginning of the specification in the area of training, as well as in the choice of the modality in which you want to develop the work. In the 3rd phase concerning the learning with the mentors, field work begins, guided by trainers with more professional experience, called mentors. The 4th phase is for trainers who have already acquired enough theoretical and practical knowledge to become mentors. The last phase corresponds to the globalization of all stages of the career, allowing lifelong learning.

Career progression is made through the development of the coach in variables such as coach characteristics, training and competition, these being similar for all coaches. For the ASC, contextual factors are also essential for this whole process of evolution. The trainer’s characteristics are related to basic training/experience, trainer’s attributes, and training style. As far as training is concerned, it is important to consider its structure and the way in which the trainers implement the routines, how they set goals and make changes to the plan initially foreseen. During competition it is essential to analyze the key tasks that the trainer must perform before, during and after competition, always considering the particular characteristics of each athlete. Within the AS, there is still to consider the contextual aspects, which means that the reflection must include adaptive references in order to meet the needs of each athlete: “ I take a lot of time thinking about how this piece of equipment, training plan or the temperature outside is going to affect my athletes, sometimes the same, but often differently from the able-bodied program. Not better, or worse, just different ” [ 33 ].

3.5.4. Adapted Sports Coach Reality

The reality of the trainer is related to the context that the ASC faces throughout their professional career and this is marked by two poles, the positive and the negative. The positive reality is associated with two benefits: the intrinsic benefit, which corresponds to personal and professional development, and the extrinsic benefit, which highlights interpersonal relationships (parents and athletes). The negative reality comes from 4 factors, which can condition the participation of athletes with disabilities: those of a practical origin (operational and physical), those based on knowledge, psychosocial factors and those related to funding “ The lack of funding provided to athletes with a disability was a common theme reported by the coaches, and one which they felt negatively impacted their capacity to coach to the best of their ability ” [ 34 ].

3.6. Analytical Subjects

3.6.1. difficulties of the adapted sports coach.

The ASC faces a series of obstacles and difficulties throughout their career: social difficulties; learning difficulties and difficulty in performing the function. As for social difficulties, these are related to stigma in choosing the area of AS, social stigma and financial issues. Stigma in choice is caused by a lack of information and knowledge about sport for disabled people, leading to misconceptions about performing the function. Social stigma arises from society’s general lack of knowledge about disability, leveraged by a lack of educational investment to explain the phenomenon. Finally, funding issues are one of the main obstacles to growth and evolution, as it is deeply unbalanced when comparing AS with Regular Sport.

The learning difficulties of the ASC are a transversal obstacle at all stages of the career, since there is evident difficulty in gathering information about AS. Research on the topic of AS is scarce, which influences the creation and the production of new knowledge. On an academic level, we can find gaps in school subjects about the AS. Therefore, the selected contents only focus on generic issues and on the awareness of that reality. When it comes to the coach’s training and if we take into account the program and the workload that is dedicated to the AS subject, we can see that it is insufficient and that the specific training which tackles the adapted modalities are almost non-existent. The lack of resources previously described forces the ASC to learn through trial and error and to look for alternative sources of knowledge. Several obstacles can manifest when performing their task. In the area of AS, coaches carry out their role not only in the sport aspect, but they also have to perform their task along with handling additional issues, which are created by the lack structure of technical support. During practice there is a lack of adapted equipment, not enough available time to practice and, on many occasions, it is difficult to include athletes with and/or without disability in the same practice. When it comes to the logical aspects there are limitations regarding transportation to the competitions, the lack of access in sporting venues and in the locations for accommodation. Therefore, these aspects create fatigue and recovery time problems in athletes.

3.6.2. Learning Opportunity in Adapted Sport

AS focuses on the myriad possibilities and opportunities to obtain the essential knowledge to produce learning, since it is important for the ASC to know the global reality of the athlete. Knowing this, the articulation between the ASC and the multidisciplinary team who follows the athlete is imperative, in order to allow the coach to obtain significant information about the necessary adaptations for the benefit of the athlete. From the point of view of practical learning, this process allows the ASC to gather new knowledge, create new methodologies, and increase their ability for adaptation and creativity to meet the athletes’ needs.

In AS, athletes have a crucial role in learning, since they are the ones who integrally are aware of their own functional limits. For these athletes, coaches represent great references, as sport is an ally in the changes in their lives, allowing for greater autonomy and social inclusion. The opportunities can also come from a greater interconnection between AS and Regular Sports in a way that they take full advantage of the resources of both.

3.6.3. Particularity in Adapted Sports

For the AS, specificity, particularity and adaptation are key concepts in the building of a fair and competitive environment for all participants. The ASC requires a thorough understanding of the complexity of this athletic subsystem in order to maximize the end result of their work. Therefore, each modality presents its own features in how it manages the disability typology and can also show specificities according to the athletic type.

4. Discussion

This study aimed to synthesize and understand the qualitative empirical evidence previously published regarding the career development of ASCs. Besides, the present review also had as a goal the development of a conceptual model for the training and career path of the ASC. The conceptual model was established through the production of a thematic synthesis. The descriptive topics were extracted from the results of the selected studies and establishing the analytical topics, to achieve the study goals. In formal terms, the model was conceived using four descriptive topics and 12 descriptive subtopics, three analytical topics and eight analytical subtopics in order to advance the literature related to the object of study of the present review.

The establishment of this synthesis is an important element for the conception of an efficient training model in the context of adapted sports, which would allow coaches to adapt training processes to the specific needs of their athletes [ 10 , 11 ].

Based on the quality of the evidence, eight studies were considered of high quality and only one of medium quality. All the studies were of a qualitative character. This investigative design can lead to conclusions based on tendentious and exaggerated interpretations [ 35 ].

The systematic review uses a strict methodology in the process, including a thorough research of the literature, applying inclusion criteria and selecting the explicitly outlined studies. The collection of the selected studies in the investigation was elaborated through the extraction of data and their subsequent analysis, and the whole process was carried out independently by three investigators. The disagreements were worked out by consensus. Even though the strategy for the literary search was executed using a comprehensive process, we could still detect a publishing bias regarding the selected studies. In which case the research strategies could be insufficient and could also compromise the results [ 36 ]. Since all of the studies were written in English, not taking other languages into consideration, and since the sample mainly consisted of elite coaches, there could have been biased predisposition.

The discoveries made in the systematic review are aligned with many current worries in the AS area, where limitations in the scientific research are noticeable, namely about practice and the coach’s role [ 9 , 37 ]. For the coaches who intervene in the AS area, knowledge becomes essential since they have to understand both the sport and the typology of the athlete [ 36 ], which means that, in order for the coach to adapt the process and program of the practice to the level of functionality of each individual athlete, these factors are pivotal and cannot be underrated [ 2 ]. We can conclude that the ASC faces additional challenges and obstacles. These difficulties are reflected in particular in the gathering of specific information, either on the modalities or on the understanding of the athletes’ disabilities. This procedure leads to trial-and-error coaching, therefore affecting the athletes [ 28 ]. The need to improve the ASC’s training is evident, especially in the development of learning situations [ 27 , 31 ]. The combination of the formal, non-formal and informal learning sources is fundamental for learning quality optimization [ 37 ]. It is important to note that the tutorials, which promote reflection and an exchange of experiences in pairs, are essential elements that provide the ASC with practical strategies for problem solving [ 6 ].

Bentzen et al. [ 10 ] indicated that the development of formal education for adaptive sports coaches should be based on empirical research. Furthermore, they state that scientific evidence would help the overall progress of the sport context for disabled athletes. Therefore, further research is needed to better understand the definition of coaching effectiveness in this context. This research aims to further deepen the knowledge of adapted sports coaches in order to generate a specific body of knowledge that is different from that of other coaches.

The rearrangement of the training programs in the AS area are essential so they can become effective and efficient according to the coaches’ needs [ 38 ]. Regarding their training, it was suggested it should include practical activity programs, specificities of related contents with the adapted modalities, and observation in a real context [ 2 ]. In formal terms and from the academic training viewpoint, the encouragement of research that connects theory and practice is viewed as necessary for the scientific development of the area [ 39 ].

Recommendations for future research can be characterized by sectors: methodological deficits, sample characteristics and AS specificities. In relation to the methodological deficits, the inclusion and combination of various research methods were suggested. In regards to the sample characteristics, it was proven to be important to include other sport agents, political decision-makers, disabled coaches, coaches with little experience and women coaches. Lastly, regarding AS specificities, it is important to deepen knowledge of both practice and coach. This way the identification of the ASC’s typology becomes essential, encompassing problematics such as planning, decisions and training, as well as the leadership method used during the process of practice.

5. Conclusions

The systematization was made operative with the results of the included studies, where it was perceptible that the path of the ASC is divided into distinct phases that integrate each other and are related to the learning progression in the professional training of the coach. The path of the ASC possesses some particularities when performing the task, making the articulation of the deepened knowledge of the disability typology and the specific adaptations of the modalities, a key element. These suppositions become essential in matching practice to the athlete, optimizing their performance in a specific and particular context.

One of the challenges for AS is the lack of knowledge and financial investment which creates difficulty for the professionals. On the other hand, this area also involves great learning potential, since coaches have to become more creative and innovative in the performance of their task.

To summarize, it is essential to underpin the professional and learning path in the AS area with the development of scientific investigations, in order to solidify the coaches’ knowledge and to allow the athletes to progress.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, P.P., A.R., H.M., and S.J.I., Methodology, A.R., P.P., H.M., and S.J.I., Formal analysis, P.P. and A.R. Reviewers, A.R., P.P., H.M., A.A. and S.J.I., Writing—original draft preparation, P.P. and A.R. Writing—review and editing, H.M., A.A. and S.J.I. Visualization, P.P. Supervision, H.M. and S.J.I. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This study has been partially subsidized by the Aid for Research Groups (GR18170) from the Regional Government of Extremadura (Department of Employment, Companies and Innovation), with a contribution from the European Union from the European Funds for Regional Development.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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