This study adopts an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to investigate talent development in women’s football from a bioecological perspective, using a Women’s Super League (WSL) Category 1, Professional Game Academy (PGA) U16 team as a case study.
In the quantitative phase, players completed the TDEQ-5, and in the qualitative phase, the Bioecological Athlete Development Framework was introduced to reveal a complex interplay among micro, meso, and exosystemic factors shaping players' experiences across athletic, educational, and psychosocial domains.
The study highlights both functional (boosters) and dysfunctional (blockers) factors, with key themes emerging in individualised development, competition format, practice structure, transitional support and the role of robust social networks.
Doggett, J., McQuilliam, S. J., & Roberts, S. J. (2026). Understanding talent development in women’s football: Bioecological insights from a mixed-methods study in a WSL Category 1 academy. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1-17.
Colonoscopy is a complex skill to teach. Understanding trainer cognition is an important factor in determining the level of trainer competence. This study aimed to explore colonoscopy trainer thoughts as they observed trainee performance.
Differences were observed between trainers, highlighting a lack of consistency in relation to their thoughts while observing a trainee perform colonoscopy.
This study provides support for use of TA as a method to understand trainer cognition in colonoscopy. It suggests the need for further research to explore consistency of training across trainers.
Whitehead, A., Causer, J., Rankin, M., McGinty-Minister, K., & O'Toole, P. (2025). Do all trainers think the same? Exploring use of the Think Aloud method to understand colonoscopy trainer thought processes. Endoscopy International Open, 13 (continuous publication).
Steven Vaughan, Hayley E. McEwan, Angela Beggan and Amy E. Whitehead
This study used narrative inquiry to explore how professional women cyclists experience stress and cope during races.
Six professional cyclists participated in semi-structured interviews. Using pragmatist narrative inquiry and a reflexive, creative approach, their stories were crafted into first-person narratives and combined into an ethnodrama depicting a fictional women’s race. The resulting ethnodrama, Tension Lines: The Invisible Weight of the Ride, highlights the complex, context-driven nature of stress and coping in women’s professional cycling, moving beyond purely cognitive interpretations. The study offers a nuanced understanding of stress and coping in elite women cyclists. The ethnodrama resonated with non-participant cyclists and may help athlete support personnel better understand the emotional and contextual dynamics of competition stress.
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Mi An, Takehiro Sasai, Ryotaro Ito, Mayumi Inoue, Misa Komaki, Yusuke Kusano, Ami Tabata, Farid Bardid, Katie Fitton Davies, Lawrence Foweather, Zoe Knowles, Simon J. Roberts, James Rudd and Toshihiro Kato
This paper builds on Katie’s PhD and was an international collaboration with colleagues at LJMU and Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan. This publication is the first of two empirical studies to validate Katie’s MAT-PE motivational tool across physical activity domains (MAT-PA) with children with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study was to establish further content validity in relation to the MAT-PA (picture resources, instructions, motivational items, response options and recall period).
Read Development and Further Content Validation of the Motivation Assessment Tool
