Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the contemporary elite sport environment many challenges face sport organisations and elite athletes as both attempt to achieve success in complex economic, political, and social environments. In particular, today’s athletes are often faced with demands that can affect their social, emotional, and physical well-being as they strive to negotiate the somewhat elusive balance between performance and personal development. The increasing competitiveness in international sport and the growing professionlisation of elite athletes and their sports are therefore demanding continued improvement in the organisation and administration of athletes’ personal and performance development. However, little research has been conducted to establish the factors that impact on elite athlete development through the identification of athletes’ needs and the support required to meet those needs. This study was designed to improve systems of athlete development through an original exploratory study that addressed three main study aims. First, it identified the needs of elite athletes in the contemporary elite sport environment from the perspective of both elite athletes and stakeholders working in sport organisations. Second, it identified the elements of high performance athlete development programs by analysing official organisation documents and examining perspectives of elite athletes and stakeholders working in sport organisations. Third, it considered the extent to which athlete development programs address the needs of elite athletes. The significance of the study lies in its original approach to identify the needs of elite athletes by considering the perspectives of elite athletes themselves. This unique aspect of the study highlights the need to enhance athlete development processes by completing a thorough needs analysis that also considers the perspectives of key stakeholders. The study also makes an important and original contribution to the field by investigating the extent to which high performance athlete development programs address athletes’ needs, by considering the distribution of resources and services in contemporary sport. This has important implications for the more effective use of government funding that supports elite sport. Finally, the study is significant as it addresses the fundamental roles of organisations in elite sport, and justifies the need for more equitable distributions of resources. The study’s significance was established by reviewing selected pieces of the literature on the historical progression of elite sport systems from amateur to professional bases, the psychological literature on burnout, stress and coping in the contemporary elite sport environment, and the elements of successful elite sport development systems. Theories pertaining to management and psychology provided a theoretical and conceptual framework for this study. In particular, social exchange theory and theory of equitable resource distribution were used to describe the use and impact of resources in the facilitation of athlete development. To address the study questions, a qualitative research approach was designed using an interpretive constructivist methodology. Seventy-six semistandardised in-depth interviews were conducted with elite athletes and members of international and national sporting organisations, and government bodies, from Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. Through a process of inductive analysis, nine broad needs of elite athletes in the contemporary elite sport environment were revealed, including funding, career and education opportunities, specialist support, coaching, social support, facilities and training resources, lifestyle/balance, travel and competition opportunities, and group/team training. While the support services or resources provided by organisations operating in elite sport were considered to broadly address the needs of elite athletes, not all athletes had access to the necessary resources and services from their supporting organisation, to have their needs fulfilled. Some needs were not provided or prioritised by sport organisations due to the focus on performance outcomes. These findings suggest that the needs of elite athletes in the contemporary elite sport environment require more careful consideration by sport organisations. The study contributed to the body of knowledge concerning elite athlete development, and the role of sport organisations in the facilitation of athlete development. It addressed important contributions to the development of theory such as the need to consider the value of identified resources and services when determining the significance of cost benefit analyses in elite sport development contexts, and the applicability of need-based resource distributions to the elite sport context. It also provided important implications for practice, with a number of questions advanced for the development of theoretical and empirical investigations in future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".