The Centre for Sport Capacity and its members are involved in various academic and applied research projects. Information about these projects’ findings and their real-world applications are highlighted below.
2020 U16 European Cup – Girls Hockey Participation
Project Lead: Dr. Julie Stevens
Support: Cole McClean
European Ice Hockey Federations are facing issues around gender equity with girls in hockey, such as their lack of access to tournaments, the high number of girls who drop out of sports around ages 12-16, and the challenges faced in developing high performance programs.
Active Niagara Network
Project Leads: Dr. Martha Barnes, Sarah Ane
The Active Niagara Network (A.N.N) is a collective of municipal parks and recreation directors from across the Niagara Region, as well as other provincial and community sport and recreation leaders. The A.N.N meets throughout the year to foster discussion and collaboration related to sport and recreation initiatives throughout Niagara’s municipalities.
Biathlon Canada
Project Lead: Dr. Michele K. Donnelly
This project is a gender audit of Biathlon Canada, a national sport organization committed to improving gender equity in all aspects of its organization and operation. This includes athletes (membership), coaches, technical officials, decision makers/leadership, and staff, as well as programs, policies, and budgets. In order to make informed decisions about improving gender equity, Biathlon Canada needs accessible information about their current situation. This gender audit will be used to conduct research about how gender is taken into consideration (or not) in all aspects of the organization, and to inform evidence-based recommendations for change. Additionally, the data and analysis will help us to better understand the process of conducting a gender audit of a Canadian sport organization.
Bowls Canada
Project Lead: Dr. Shannon Kerwin
This project, led by Dr. Shannon Kerwin, aims to explore the recruitment and retention of women 40+ into competitive bowls programming. Understanding the potential factors that influence these participant decisions supports an informed decision-making process about programming as well as improving access to and retaining women in sport and physical activity.
Building Coaching Capacity at One Provincial Sport Organization
Project Lead: Dr. Ryan Clutterbuck
Project Support: Dr. Shannon Kerwin and Dr. Patrick Reid
This project sought to extend the capacity building literature by focusing on an initiative that is ongoing at one provincial sport organization (PSO) in Canada. Specifically, researchers and practitioners from the focal PSO are working collaboratively to enhance the PSOs ability to achieve its mission through an improved understanding and appreciation of its coaches.
To do so, expert coaches identified by the PSO as having the experience and credibility to speak about issues facing coaches from across the long-term athlete development spectrum were interviewed. The focus was on their professional development and the role of the PSO in that development. Additionally, coaches were surveyed about their perspectives on existing programs and structures as well as capacity challenges (i.e., access to various resources. These methods were able to provide actionable insights for the PSO to enhance capacity.
Hamilton Moves Communication Strategy Evaluation
Project Lead: Dr. Julie Stevens
The CSC partnered with the Hamilton Moves project and the City of Hamilton to conduct a program evaluation of the SportsBlast programming for kids aged 3-5. Hamilton Moves is a collaborative project funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, with partners from SportHamilton, City of Hamilton Recreation, City of Hamilton Public Health Services, Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board and Sport for Life. This initiative serves as an important physical literacy development opportunity for children. Therefore, the City of Hamilton wanted to understand parent/guardian understanding of the program, their perceptions of the importance of physical literacy in their child’s current and future programming, as well as whether or not the City’s marketing efforts were successful in informing parents of different program offerings available for children. Results of the project were also able to support future evaluation, messaging, and outreach.
Mapping Sport Participation
Project Leads: Dr. Kyle Rich and Dr. Jeff Boggs
In this project, Dr. Rich and Dr. Boggs, in cooperation with Dr. Ann Pegoraro and Brooke Ellison-Wareing, provided a critical geographical analysis of sport development in order to understand trends in sport participation in diverse community contexts. The analysis allowed them to “map” participation data with regard to age, gender, and location. Working with their research partner, Row Ontario, they examined if and how women and girls in diverse community contexts are accessing sport (rowing) participation opportunities. The analysis provided a foundation for future sport development initiatives and evidence for future policy making at the Provincial Sport Organization. The findings provide insights on the geographic and demographic factors that impact sport participation in order to inform future evidence-based policy making.
Niagara Sport Database
Project Lead: Dr. Julie Stevens
Started in 2018, the Niagara Sport Database (N.S.D) arose from a need to gather more information about the impact of sport in Niagara. Data about sport events, sport facilities, and sport organizations is gathered and analyzed in order to generate evidence-based decisions about the social and economic value of sport in the region. As a pilot project, the N.S.D has benefitted from the support from the Digital Scholarship Lab at Brock University.
The N.S.D consists of three major elements: it has an inventory of sport facilities throughout the region so as to support infrastructure planning and sport event hosting; it also has an inventory of sport-related organizations in the region; and lastly, it tracks and measures economic activity generated by a variety of different sport events throughout Niagara.
If you or your sport organization are interested in learning more and potentially getting involved with the Niagara Sport Database project, please fill out this form.
Safe Sport Project
Project Leads: Dr. Michael Van Bussel, Dr. Michele K. Donnelly, Dr. Hilary Findlay, and Dr. Julie Stevens
The Centre for Sport Capacity (CSC), in an effort to help facilitate the critical Pan-Canadian discussion of Safe Sport, mobilize knowledge through multiple initiatives (see below), and provide resources that can be utilized nation-wide. The first step of this process was hosting the three-day 2021 Safe Sport Forum (June 16-18). The Forum was a great success, and the dialogue generated from panelists and attendees will be help launch two critical safe sport resources:
- Safe Sport Portal: The first resource being developed by the CSC is an open-access portal for any sport stakeholders to utilize. The portal will offer a variety of safe sport resources, including videos, reference guides, exemplars, and other resources for community sport groups. Resources such as this will be critical to help organizations operationalize the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS)
- Safe Sport e-reader: Presenters from our Safe Sport forum and additional members with expertise in the field will be contributing to the e-Reader. We will be more formally announcing the launch of this important resource through e-Campus in the near future.
Sport For Life E-Learning Modules
Project Leads: Dr. Paul Jurbala, Chris Charlebois, Dr. Ryan Clutterbuck, Dr. Shannon Kerwin, Dr. Hilary Findlay, Dr. Patrick Reid, Dr. Kirsty Spence and Dr. Julie Stevens
Support: Cole McClean
In the pursuit of furthering their goal of knowledge mobilization, the Centre for Sport Capacity partnered with Sport for Life to create a series of e-learning resources to support community sport organizations.
The Same Game Project
Project Lead: Dr. Shannon Kerwin
This report was created for Canadian Women & Sport (formerly the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity (C.A.A.W.S) by Dr. Kerwin. The study involved working through the Same Game Model with 17 sport clubs in Ontario.
The Same Game Project was also presented at our Women in Sport & Leadership Forum in 2019.
