Qualitative Research Methods in the Analysis of Identity of Top-class Women Athletes

Abstract

In sociological research on sport exists a predominance of questionnaire and quantifying methods, inquiry techniques aimed at establishing representative fea tures. Not enough attention is paid to the question whether the method adopted is at all in accordance with the questions asked and the subject matter. If based on the methodology of symbolical interactionism this methodology deals with the entire course of research and if, in accordance with Merton and Kendall (1955), data is to present not only the reaction to a situation about which questions are asked, but should rather show the empirical reality of "genuine life", then attention should be also paid to phenomenological connections. It is necessary above all to arrange those connections in a certain order, according to their significance, so that the social relations, which determine processes of social life, as one process follows the other and one influences the other, would become interrelated. Taken into account in this respect should be the fact that the responses, such as opinions, attitudes and motivations arise within social relations and their sense depends exclusively on these relations. This dependence on the context requires, of course, procedures of interpretation in methodology, because in general interviews of in dividuals are not in accordance with reality which requires dialogue. This is true especially when one examines the mode of life of certain groups of people, because one should take into account the fact that identities, according to Meads, take shape as a result of social processes and depict the individual reflections of organized relations of human exchange of experience and behavioural patterns. On the basis of an empirical analysis of the formation of identity in the case of top-class women athletes in the F.R.G. evidence is provided of the fact that qualitative methods (sociobiographical methods, in-depth interviews) and inductive procedures are more to the point for this type of subject matter than deductive research and quantifying methods.