Disability and sport : the experiences of athletes and their coaches

Abstract

Sport is key to the maintainence of a healthy lifestyle. It improves one‘s physical, social and psychological health. These benefits are reported for both disabled and non-disabled persons (Bragaru et al., 2013). Nevertheless, the participation rate of disabled people in sport is still very low. The aim of this research is to explore the sporting experiences of Maltese disabled athletes and their coaches. The research questions posed by this study revolve around the participants‘ general experiences, the motivating factors behind their sport participation and their perceptions of disability. The self-determination theory (SDT) and the affirmative model of disability were used as the principal theoretical frameworks. The former explains human behaviour in relation to the different types of motivation, whilst the latter refers to how disabled people embrace human differences to adopt positive self-identities. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was applied as the methodological framework. Eight individuals were recruited for this research – four physically disabled athletes and four coaches who participate in either wheelchair basketball or swimming. Data was generated through face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with each individual participant. In-depth analysis of each interview transcript was carried out in order to extract themes and sub-themes. Overall, participants experience sport in a positive manner, despite the several barriers they encounter within the local scenario. The main barriers include transportation problems, poor planning on the part of sport organisations, attitudinal problems and lack of financial resources. All the participants are intrinsically motivated to participate in sport, even though most of them initially engaged in sport due to external reasons, such as the athletes‘ rehabilitative needs, and the coaches‘ awareness of an unsatisfied need. The participants‘ sporting experiences seem to give rise to conflicting perceptions of disability. Through sport, athletes embrace the affirmative model of disability to form positive self-identities, which turns them into disability advocates and role models. However, sport may also contribute to 'feelings of normality‘ which bring about the rejection of the disability identity. This concept of 'normality‘ is re-inforced when coaches perceive physically disabled athletes in a more favourable light than athletes with other types of disability. As a result of these findings, this study recommends that sport should be promoted amongst the Maltese population at large with a view to fostering a stronger sport culture. Other incentives can be specifically designed for the advancement of disability sport, such as promotional videos featuring disabled athletes and educational programmes. Further research on disability sport is also required especially with respect to the manner in which the dominant disability discourse influences sport participants and public perceptions. Such research could promote the reconstruction of a disability discourse which values the self-worth of disabled people.