Exploring consent in sport: A new agenda for research on health, wellbeing and gender
Consent is a central feature of healthy, enjoyable and equitable sport (Channon and Matthews, 2021). Recent scandals in gymnastics, athletics and swimming point to the damaging consequences arising when athletes’ consent is compromised, misunderstood, or simply absent, thus creating space for abuse. Yet despite its importance, consent is an under-researched and under-theorised topic that represents an important area for the development of impactful research (Channon and Matthews, 2021).
The successful candidate will employ the immersive research methods recently outlined by Matthews (2021) to develop a rich understanding of how consent is worked out, (mis)communicated, and/or withdrawn in sport settings.
This work will be set against the background of serious health issues embedded in various sports worlds (AlHashmi and Matthews, 2021a; Matthews and Channon, 2017; Matthews and Jordan, 2020; Matthews, 2020) and problematic medical support which is provided to athletes (AlHashmi and Matthews, 2021b; Channon, Matthews, and Hillier, 2020, 2021). Such issues complicate the process of consent in sport due to the potential for serious and lasting detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Given these details the following research questions will be explored:
How do athletes understand, construct, and communicate consent to take part within high-performance training and competition contexts?
How well informed are athletes about the nature of sporting risks when giving consent in these ways?
How are such consent practices – or lack thereof – generally implicated in athletes’ health and wellbeing?
And how do individual and group characteristics – such as gender, age, ethnicity, disability, and so on – impact these processes?
The work of Channon and Matthews (2021) is the first substantive contribution to exploring consent in sport, as such, it sets an agenda for future work and establishes the topic as an important focus for the social-cultural exploration of sport, physical cultures, and health promotion. It is expected that findings from this work will enhance our understanding of athlete welfare and wellbeing, maintaining participation in sport and help develop means of empowering athletes to take more control over their sporting lives. There is a clear opportunity for rich, novel and impactful evidence to be produced from this project.
References
AlHashmi, R. and C.R. Matthews (2021a) Athletes' understanding of concussion – Uncertainty, certainty and the ‘expert’ on the street. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, Online first.
AlHashmi, R. and C.R. Matthews (2021b) ‘He may not be qualified in it, but I think he’s still got the knowledge’: Team- doctoring in combat sports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. 10.1177/1012690220987136
Channon, A. and Matthews C.R. (2021) Communicating consent in sport: A typological model of athletes’ consent practices within combat sports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Online first.
Channon A., Matthews C.R. and Hillier M. (2020) Medical care in unlicensed combat sports: A need for standardised regulatory frameworks. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 23(3), 237-240.
Channon A., Matthews C.R. and Hillier M. (2021) The intersubjective accomplishment of power by medical professionals within unregulated combat sports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 56(4), 578-597.
Matthews C.R. (2020) ‘The fog soon clears’: Bodily negotiations, embodied understandings, competent body action and ‘brain injuries’ in boxing. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, online first, doi:10.1177/1012690220907026.
Matthews C.R. (2021) Doing Immersive Research: Using Social Science to Understand the Human World. Nottingham, CRM Publishing.
Matthews C.R. and Channon A. (2017) Understanding sports violence: Revisiting foundational explorations. Sport in Society, 20(7), 751-767.