The Advocate, Community-Minded, and Sportsperson: Constructing Personas to Understand the Identities of Sexually Diverse Volunteers in Sport

Aim and Research Questions:

Beyond participation, sport volunteering may be a valuable and meaningful way to engage in sport, but volunteer numbers are declining in the UK. Sport England has acknowledged a lack of diversity in the sport volunteer pool and the potential for more people to experience the benefits of volunteering (Natale, 2022).

Sport has been depicted as an agent of bringing positive social change. However, research indicates that for many LGBT+ individuals sport has also been a site of exclusion. Yet, limited research addresses sport volunteer experiences of LGBT+ people (Hoye et al., 2019). Accumulating individual experiences over time can be seen as a way of constituting a sense of identity. Using identity as the central concept to comprehend the experiences of LGBT+ sport volunteers has thus far been limited (Legg & Karner, 2021). This paper uses an identity work lens to understand the unique lived experiences of LGBT+ individuals within a sport volunteering context. To achieve this, the study addresses the following research question:

RQ. In what ways do LGBT+ volunteers in sport engage in identity work to manage and negotiate their identities throughout their volunteering experiences?

Theoretical Background and Literature Review:

The theoretical framework for the paper is based on Watson's (2020) model of identity work. This model highlights the importance of constructing, maintaining, and revising one's sense of self and the effort invested in creating personal meaning. Use of personas as part of this model provides a valuable lens through which to understand how individuals present their identities to others in the social circles they mix. The paper considers the ways in which LGBT+ individuals balance the benefits and drawbacks of disclosing their identities as evidence of identity work within the social arena of sport volunteering. Against this backdrop, the paper contributes to the discussion on the well-documented issues of heteronormativity in sport as noted by Englefield et al. (2016).

Research Design, Methodology and Data Analysis:

The paper used a qualitative research design with topical life history interviews of 16 sexually diverse sport volunteers in the UK to explore their experiences and identities. The data collected was analysed through the lens of constructivist grounded theory using initial, focused and theoretical coding (Charmaz, 2006). The participants were recruited through purposive sampling and represent a diverse range of sports, volunteer roles, and levels of involvement in LGBT+ communities in the UK. The interview questions were designed to facilitate recollection of the participants' volunteer roles, volunteer journeys, and their identity construction in the context of sport volunteering. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Results/Findings and Discussion:

Findings of the study indicate that whilst participants resisted restrictive LGBT+ norms they also found supportive and inclusive ways to express their identity. Participants’ identity work involved (i) establishing communities (ii) attending identity-related events and (iii) self-reflection and personal betterment. Participants demonstrated agency in actively shaping their identities in sport. Equally, a range of social and cultural contexts impacted this identity work.

Three personas were identified in the data as part of participants’ identity construction. Firstly, advocate personas were driven to volunteer to further an inclusion agenda. Advocate participants tended to identify with the LGBT+ label, volunteer in LGBT+-related sport environments, and actively engage in LGBT+ inclusion initiatives. Secondly, community-minded personas volunteered to help others. Community-minded participants tended to volunteer in sport and non-sport contexts and helping others had become an integral part of their self-identity. Thirdly, sportsperson personas can be understood as an extension of participants' sporting identities in their desire for the sport to thrive. Through the development of personas, identity work creates resources and constraints that shape how individuals respond to identity tensions such as volunteering sometimes being a barrier to sport participation. Findings also suggest volunteer identities and LGBT+ identities are intertwined and that the adoption of personas plays a role in shaping a coherent and consistent sense of self which becomes a chosen identity in the context of sport volunteering.

Conclusion, Contribution, and Implication:

The contribution of this paper is twofold. It offers a novel perspective on how LGBT+ identities intersect with volunteer (and other) identities in the context of sports volunteering. Further, it provides three volunteer personas as a conceptual framework to understand how individuals present themselves as volunteers. This research provides important insights into the experiences of LGBT+ volunteers. Volunteer managers, sport clubs, and sport governing bodies can use these personas to better understand these groupings in the context of volunteer engagement and retention to facilitate more meaningful and inclusive volunteering experiences.