Introduction and Methods 1.1Project Background

1.2Methodology

This project involved four individual lines of evidence with four separate target populations. The employed methodologies included:

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  An on-line survey of AAP carded high-performance athletes;
  
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  On-line survey of Presidents and Athlete Service Managers of the seven Canadian Sport Centres;
  
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  Telephone survey of National Team Coaches and High Performance Directors; and
  
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  Follow-up interviews with selected National Team Coaches and High Performance Directors.
  

a)Online Survey of High Performance Athletes

The survey of athletes was designed as a self-administered, web-based survey. All 1,960 high-performance athletes carded at the time of the survey were invited to participate and every attempt was made to reach as many of these athletes as possible. Specifically, Sport Canada circulated advance communications to athletes, National Sport Organizations and Canadian Sport centres, and communicated with National Sport Organizations at several intervals throughout the data collection period. EKOS also offered a number of non-monetary prizes (such as ipods and iphones) as an added incentive to responding. Additional e-mail reminders were issued over several months, as well as reminder calls made to over 400 non-respondent athletes by telephone. The overall response rate for the survey, out of the athlete pool for which there was full, valid contact information is 51 per cent. The response rate achieved in 2004 was 46 per cent.

b)Telephone Survey of National Team Coaches and High Performance Directors

The second major data collection activity involved a telephone survey of 96 National Team Coaches and High Performance Directors (of the roughly 200 that were suggested by Sport Canada). The administration of the telephone survey was based on EKOS’ CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) system. The telephone survey lasted an average of 20 minutes. The survey data was collected during the same data collection period as that of the CSC Presidents/Service Managers and athletes. All respondents received an introductory e-mail prior to being contacted for the survey that explained the purpose of the survey and stressed that all responses were both voluntary and confidential.

c)Survey of Presidents and Service Managers of CSCs

The third data collection activity for this project was a small survey conducted by self-administered methods (mail and web-based) with the seven Presidents and seven Athlete Service Managers of the CSCs (Atlantic, Montreal, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Calgary, and Pacific). All contact information on potential respondents (name, organization, and telephone number) was provided by Sport Canada, who also helped determine which staff to survey. Some of the questions in the survey questionnaire were qualitative, open-ended in nature and others were closed ended. Each questionnaire took an average 15 to 20 minutes to complete. The questionnaire was administered over the same data collection period as that of the athletes and coaches. Of the 14 individuals invited, 12 responded.

d)Key Informant Interviews with National Team Coaches

In addition to the telephone survey, 13 interviews were conducted with key national team coaches and High Performance Directors (who were pre-selected by Sport Canada for interviews as a follow-up to those of the coaches/HPD). This took the form of a 30 to 60 minute telephone interview with a loosely structured set of questions. This component took place late in the study process, during the analysis and reporting period. The purpose of these key informant interviews was to clarify any areas that were not clear or were surprising from the athlete and coach surveys, as well as to ask coaches to comment on some of the key results from these surveys. Results of these interviews are woven into the appropriate sections of the report and are set off from the rest of the text in boxes, to enable readers to more easily distinguish the results of the key informant interviews from the survey findings.