Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old and be either an athlete or coach involved in high-performance or competitive sport. You’ll need to be currently or recently (within the last five years) involved in regular high-level sports training and to have taken part in competitions and/or events.

What you’ll do

We will invite you to talk to a member of our research team about your experiences.

• Athletes and coaches over 18: This discussion can take place in-person, online or over the phone at a time that’s convenient for you
• Athletes and coaches aged 13-18: We will arrange a group discussion with your peers or teammates at a convenient location, such as your training venue or school

You can also join an advisory group to help us prepare guidance materials based on our findings from the discussions. We will explain more about this if you take part, and you can choose at a later date if you are interested in this.

Why you should take part

By taking part in this study, you’ll be making a valuable contribution to scientific knowledge.

Your experiences will help us to understand the athlete and coach experience of discussing body weight and will shape the guidance we are aiming to develop.

We also hope that you will find it interesting and enjoyable.

Ethical approval

This project has been given favourable ethics opinion by the University of Bath Biomedical Research Ethics Committee [reference: 4273-6974]

Your data

Only the research team will have access to the personal information you provide, which will be treated as confidential. The only exception is if you tell us something that makes us concerned for the health or safety of you or anyone else. If this happens, the researcher may be required to pass information on for review by the appropriate authority, but they will talk to you about this first.

The audio recordings of the interview will be transcribed (typed up) by the research team or by a University of Bath-approved transcription service. We will remove or change the names of people, places, teams and any other information that could be used to identify you and delete the recording once this is done.

All data will be stored securely on the University’s server in accordance with current UK data protection legislation. We will keep the data for a minimum of 10 years. We will not share your name or any other identifying information in any presentation or publication of the research. Find out more about the University of Bath’s privacy notice.