UK Sport

Research And Publications

UK Sport has teamed up with Comic Relief
UNICEF

Research Projects

Sport for Development Research Initiative
Measuring the impact of sport for development- UK Sport has partnered with Comic Relief in an innovative project to build a body of evidence about the role sport can play in improving the lives of disadvantaged communities internationally. Professor Fred Coalter, an expert in the field of monitoring and evaluation from the University of Stirling, has been supporting the participating organisations develop tools to measure and assess the impact of sport in their programmes and produce a impact report on the findings of the data gathered.

The research project took place over 3 years and included an in-depth analysis of six sport for development programmes in India and Africa to generate a body of evidence on the impact of these programmes.

Download and read the Executive Summary [PDF, 66k]
Download and read the Full Report [PDF, 1,036k]

Go Sister's external monitoring and evaluation project – Zambia
The Go Sisters project is a well-established sport-in-development initiative now benefitting from a structured five-year programme of investment and development (through DFID). On-going measurement of programme impact has a crucial role to play in informing the development of the plan throughout the five year period, capturing lessons learnt, and providing credible evidence of achievements. and the impact on the peer leaders and participants within the programme.

IDS (UK Sport’s charitable arm) in partnership with EduSport Foundation, through DFID, CGC and UK Sport support, have begun (June 2009) a four year impact research project with Tess Kay, (Brunel University, UK) and Ruth Jeanes (Monash University, Australia). The research project will focus on the impact of the programme on participants; a longitudinal study on the peer leaders involved in the programme; and EduSport capacity building in gathering and analyzing data.

International community Coach Education Systems (ICES) Research
UK Sport is working collaboratively with Leeds Metropolitan on this research that is focused on community coach education and how it can be made to work most effectively. Specifically this piece of work is investigating the impact of interventions to support the development of community coaches with UK Sport’s ICES initiative.

Developing employability skills the IDEALS way
In partnership with Northumbria University, Lynne Powell is leading on an investigation of cultural intelligence and employability of IDEALS participants.

Child Friendly Sport
This project was initiated with a view to building a case for a wider project focused on encouraging/supporting action within relevant government, civil society and academic institutions to develop policies, strategies and implementation programmes leading to child-friendly sport.

Research collaboration
Additionally members of UK Sport’s International Development team are collaborating with different higher education institutions on specific research and publications including:

Conceptualisations, issues and challenges of child friendly sport
The role of the sport and development coach
The positioning and use of sport as a tool for social development, in particular within the international development sphere

Once publications and research papers become available – they will be downloadable here.

Conferences

Sport for Development Research Findings Launch and Workshop
(15-17 November 2010, Cape Town, South Africa)
The aim of the workshop is to launch and share the findings of the Sport for Development Research Initiative (above); provide an opportunity for reflections and learning from the findings; contextualise the data and the relationship between M&E and programme design/theory - consider how we understand and interpret results. This workshop is invitation only.

Sport, Child and Youth Development, EU forum for UN SDP IWG
(8 December 2010, Brussels, Belgium)
This forum is a follow to the plenary session that was held in Geneva on 5th May. The aim is to bring together European Ministries of Youth and Sport as well as European and Global stakeholders to discuss policy and intervention strategies in: Child Protection; Youth Employability; Youth in Education

ICES International Exchange Webinars
As part of the International community Coach Education Systems (ICES) initiative UK Sport hosts ICES International Exchange Webinars every quarter.

Next Step Conference
(7 – 12 November 2011)
The Next Step Conference 2011 will be held in Trinidad and Tobago from 7-12 November 2011. This conference brings together the international Sport for Development (SfD) stakeholders from throughout the world and represents the first hosting in the Western world.

Themed "Global Partnerships for Development", Next Step 2011 is committed to strengthening collaboration among key stakeholders in the field of sport for development and provides opportunities for participants to reflect on the realities and possibilities of global partnerships around the key areas of policy, resource mobilization and monitoring and evaluation.

The Conference is designed to allow for a significant amount of interaction and sharing between and among delegates in an effort to capture the broad and varied experiences of SfD practitioners, development agencies, researchers and leading experts in the field.

For more information please visit http://nextstepconference2011.org/Main.html

For more information on key sport and development events go to http://www.sportanddev.org/newsnviews/events/.