An intervention: Bullying and banter in male youth community football

Background
With 3.35 million children aged 5-15 participating across England (The FA, 2015), football has facilitated holistic health benefits (Krustrup et al., 2010). However, a bullying culture within adolescent football is currently highly prevalent, contributing to substantial dropouts (Steinfeldt et al., 2012), with adolescent participation levels significantly decreasing across the UK from 2011-2019 (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 2020). Negative behaviours associated with reduced participation are characterised chiefly by bullying and victimisation, yet they are commonly masked as 'banter' (Newman, 2019).
The Football Association (FA) sought to address bullying issues by initiating their 2007 Respect Programme to ensure a 'safe, inclusive and fun environment' (The FA, 2007). Despite this action, NSPCC (2017) indicates that negative behaviours of teasing and bullying still occurs in community sport, which driven by teammates and coaches. Moreover, a large body of research has investigated these issues in elite youth football but limited research on community youth football (Taylor & Bruner, 2012). The concern for the presence of negative behaviour that discourages participation is indicative of a need for further research on young peoples' experience of community football for a safer sport.
Aims and Objectives
This research will impactfully address the dichotomies and gaps in bullying literature and mirrors my interests in positively influencing football culture. (Phase 1) qualitatively explores how young community footballers define bullying compared to banter and its relationship with dropping-out, (Phase 2) designing an intervention that targets nationwide bullying in youth community football and (Phase 3) qualitatively test the feasibility in community football.
Methods
The Medical Research Council's (MRC) guidance on formulating interventions underpins the research methods in this study by establishing empirical evidence, designing an intervention, and testing its feasibility (Moore et al., 2015).
Phase 1 will be achieved by qualitatively exploring how players define bullying and banter in youth community football by utilising an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and semi-structured interviews. IPA methodology is a practical approach suitable for examining the individual and collective bullying and banter experiences (Smith & Shinebourne, 2012).
Phase 2 will then be achieved by designing an intervention using iterative development cycles to reflexively analyse the intervention to positively impact emerging issues visible in the first phase (Moore et al., 2015). Phase 3 will then address the intervention's feasibility by conducting semi-structured interviews and focus groups with players, coaches and policymakers. Interviews and focus groups allow the researcher to evaluate an intervention's feasibility with in-depth individualised and collective views (Bowen et al., 2009).
Analysis
As the study will take an IPA methodology approach and a review of an intervention, a thematic analysis will be used to gage the retrospective recollection of the lived experience. This allows the researcher to interpret the data comprehensively and concisely while systematically following Vaismoradi, Jones, Turunen and Snelgrove's (2016) phases of initialisation, construction, rectification and finalisation.