Week 1 & 2 Recap

I began a collaboration with Dr. Chrysostomos Giannoulakis on May 12 as a graduate assistant in the sport administration department at Ball State University.  While I took part in 15 hours of weekly research during the fall and spring semesters, my experience with Dr. Giannoulakis already after two weeks has been very different and I’ve found it to be a challenging, and fruitful learning experience thus far.

Here is a rundown of the projects that I have been working on with him over the last two weeks:

Olympic Bid:

Coming from a decidedly quantitative research regimen in the fall and spring, I was a bit hesitant and frustrated at first when I learned that I would be working primarily with qualitative data in Dr. G’s research.  I had had several years of experience working with qualitative data as a sports reporter, but I definitely knew that it would take some time to acclimate myself with this new type of data.

I began working with qualitative data as I transcribed a 50-minute focus group interview that Dr. G conducted this spring.  The focus group involved two students (interviewees) who were students in Dr. G’s International Sport class in the fall semester.  The focus group discussed at length the most critical assignment within the class: creating an Olympic bid.

I found the transcription process at first to be very tiresome.  I found myself becoming fatigued often and, with my attention to detail, I felt like I was lacking in efficiency and stressing too much the format and word-for-word accuracy as I transcribed.  Once I found my rhythm around the 35-minute mark, I definitely found myself gaining more from the experience.  It was interesting how, as the interview progressed, that the students were able to be more open and honest with Dr. G about the benefits and pitfalls of the Olympic bid project.  After finishing up the 21-page transcription, I can see why the focus group is a good method for data collection, especially when evaluating a program or project.

Brand Authenticity:

The second interview that I transcribed was a one-on-one interview that Dr. G conducted with an undergraduate student at Ball State.  The student had extensive knowledge and experience as an action sports participant—primarily snowboarding, skateboarding, and longboarding—so Dr. G inquired on several topics including the student’s own attire preferences, his thoughts on the legitimacy of action sports companies, and his definition of authenticity in action sports.

I thought the interview was intriguing on a number of different topics.  As a sports consumer of primarily the Big 4 sports—football, basketball, baseball, hockey—I found the interviewee to be typical of what I had imagined an action sports consumer to be.  I had been interested in action sports myself, purchasing two or three skateboards and a pair of rollerblades when I was between 11 and 13 years old, but I have been very detached from the industry since then.  I think that the most profound back-and-forth between Dr. G and the interviewee came when discussing the authenticity of an action sports participant.  The differing perceptions on the dichotomy of an authentic participant and a “poser” are truly intriguing and I think call for future research.

USA Wrestling Study

Social media in sport is definitely a growing area of research.  When meeting with Dr. G and Matthew Zimmerman, a sport management professor who will be at Auburn University in the fall, last week, I was surprised to learn that there had not been a study done that looked at a singular sporting event across multiple social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram).  Dr. G and Mr. Zimmerman, along with another professor and another student are curious about the multi-platform influence on an event and delegated me to gather data on Facebook.

The event chosen for this study was the USA Wrestling Championships, held in April.  I gathered data (i.e. number of likes, shares, comments) on all of the posts that USA Wrestling posted on its Facebook page during pre, during, and post time frames.  While the data collection was very general to start and will be more analytical later on, I can already several interesting items in the data.  For example, I was surprised at the number of posts that were posted during the time frame that had no relevance to the USA Wrestling Championships event.  Also, it appears that the page is used more for posting links to articles and photos more so than posting updates of events and scores etc.

Skate For A Cause:

The previous three projects I mentioned were directly gathering and interpreting data that can be used for a study.  The final two projects I have worked on over the last two weeks are more in regards to a review of literature or familiarizing myself with the topics.  Skate For A Cause is an event that is organized by the Ryan Sheckler Foundation, the charity of famous skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, and has been put on in California for the last five years.  The most recent event was held in the first week of May and raised over $93,000 for the Foundation which aims to help injured or disabled children.

Dr. G is interested in how an event like this can contribute to holistic development.  I have learned quite a bit about Sheckler’s charity work as well as the charity of work of several other action sports athletes including Tony Hawk, Rob Dyrdek, and Shaun White.  Now that I have a better understanding of how skaters, snowboarders, etc. donate their time, talent, and treasure to charity, I am excited to discuss the next step forward for this research based on the articles and knowledge that I have gathered.

Manuscript/Well Being Festival

Finally, I proofread and gave feedback on one of Dr. G’s manuscripts in which he used a single case study to discuss the challenges of running a Well Being Festival in the country of Greece.  It was a solid manuscript that definitely told a good story and provided several interesting discussion topics including the mission of non-profit organizations, sponsorship for events, and economic considerations in event planning.  Similar to action sports, my concept of international sport is underdeveloped and this manuscript helped me develop more knowledge on event management outside the U.S.

The manuscript directly ties into a future line of research that Dr. G is exploring which is the presence of Well Being Festivals in the United States.  I spent several hours toward the end of this week researching both domestic and international Well Being and Health/Fitness Festivals.  I was surprised to learn that there are several such festivals within driving distance of Muncie which might lead to gathering some observational data in the future.  I also had a discussion with a colleague here at Ball State and learned that, in addition to its annual Welloween event, that there was a separate health and fitness type event also being organized to be held on campus next spring.