PEER BULLYING IN YOUTH SPORTS AND THE ROLE OF THE PARENTS: AN EVALUATION OF A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL ‘RESPECT STAR’

This study examined parental awareness of bullying in sports and their influence on children’s bullying experiences during sports activities. The research also aimed to critically evaluate the RESPECT STAR methodology that was developed to use during ethical dilemmas in youth sport (De Martelaer et al., 2014).

A mixed study design was used, based on a qualitative part and a quantitative part. For the qualitative part of the study, twenty semi-structured interviews took place in Flanders. In total 37 parents of sport active children in the age group of 8-12 years participated. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed by three researchers independently, quotes/answers were categorized into clusters and final core categories. During a consensus meeting on the inductive analysis, an agreement was made resulting in the following three core categories:
(A) profile of parents,
(B) (sport) involvement and
(C) influence.

Two of the main preventive approaches against bullying is raising the parental degree of involvement in the sport activity and strengthening their band with child as an individual. The reactive approaches for parents can be divided in direct consultation such as contact with the coach and indirect consultation like for example no pushing. Parents do have an important pedagogical influence by being a good example, helping their children in their social interaction with peers and react in an appropriate manner when incidents occur.

In order to test the RESPECT STAR methodology, a sports related case was made on the basis of previous research. In each of the 20 participating families the reactions on this case and the RESPECT STAR tool was evaluated. The characteristics of the RESPECT STAR methodology were compared with the results of the inductive analysis in the first part of the qualitative approach.

The quantitative part was conducted, using a standardized questionnaire, namely ‘Parenting Style Questionnaire’ (Baumrind, 1991 ; Robinson et al., 1995) making it possible to divide parents into three parental educational styles, namely ‘authoritative parenting style’, ‘authoritarian parenting style’ and ‘permissive parenting style’. These three parenting styles and their interpretation and translation in a sport context will be discussed.