In this section all considerations about limitations will be presented. The limitations will be present-ed firstly with considerations about the scope of the project, secondly considerations about the re-search and finally about the empirical data, both primary and secondary.
Scope of the project
There will only be looked into badminton in Denmark and Danish badminton clubs. Other badmin-ton nations will not be taken into consideration. Even though the whole of Denmark is a part of the analysis, this project will not take into account geographical differences that may exist.
A badminton club that is located as the only club in a small city, might not experience the same issues and possibilities as a badminton club in a large city where multiple other sports are offering their competing services.
The project will merely focus on how to attract and retain youth players within the sport, even though much effort should be and are being put into developing training offers for especially recrea-tional adult players, as this is a large market that is definitely not used to full potential within the sport. Many offers have been created specifically to adult recreational players in recent years, and these offers and the efforts made to attract this group of player, will not be analysed nor discussed in depth, as it is beyond the scope of this project. Only badminton for children will be analysed.
Furthermore a youth player is defined as a player that before the 1st of January has not turned 19 (Badminton Danmark & DGI Badminton, 2016).
Only Danish badminton clubs that are members of the national federations - Badminton Denmark and DGI Badminton – will be considered.
Research limitations
The research does not seek to find a specific guideline with ‘the right’ way to attract and retain members within the badminton sport. The goal is to contribute to existing knowledge on the subject in order to create a better future for the sport. The findings will hence act as actions that can assist
the federations and the badminton clubs in their future work. Give them a sense of direction with regard to functional activities to pursue, and a sense of what is worth spending resources on.
As this research has an interpretivist research philosophy the research is socially constructed, hence it depends on the social context. Furthermore the findings might be subject to chance (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2009). The findings will become out-dated at some point in time. It is beyond the scope of the project to keep the findings up to date and it is beyond the scope to take the varying social contexts into account. Henceforth this is why the conclusion is not a truth about retainment and attraction, merely a guide and inspiration.
The findings might present some suggestions that can aid the sport of badminton to retain and at-tract members without taking regional differences into account.
We will now move forth to the limitations of the empirical data.
Empirical data
Next considerations about the limitations of primary and secondary data will be presented. The pri-mary data will be considered first.
Primary data
This research has used mixed-methods to gather data. The advantage of the qualitative data is that the answers are in depth and can give a good understanding of the significance of specific questions.
The quantitative questionnaire can give an indication of what is significant, but it will not tell us why it is significant. Furthermore the answers will be a subject of social construction and might differ according to the situation in which they were provided. Hence the conclusion will only give an indication.
For this thesis quantitative and qualitative methods were considered beneficial for different purpos-es.
Considerations about credibility and ethics of the primary data will now be presented.
Qualitative interviews
The setup of the qualitative interviews allowed the interviewees to prepare for the interview, in-creasing the interviewee´s sense of security, and allowing them to structure their thoughts. The pro-cess of structuring can lead to some parts of the answer being left out, because they might not be found relevant. This can give a potential loss of information that might have been relevant for the project. Well thought-out and structured were valued higher than information that was potentially
The fact that three interviews were conducted via email can potentially create a loss of information as well as misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The follow up questions were used in order to limit the effect of these factors. The email interviews were chosen due to time constraints and geo-graphical constraints. Furthermore they were considered most convenient by the interviewee.
The findings from the qualitative interviews will be considered credible, as the two interviewees who were employed are key informants in their field. They work with attracting and retaining chil-dren within sports every day. Furthermore the three interviewees of the board will give an indica-tion of their percepindica-tion of the sport and what is important.
Participant observation
Most of the observations were conducted as an active participant, but some were conducted as a facilitator. This has some constraints that have to be taken into consideration. Firstly as an active participator the researcher has an active stake in the observed phenomena, hence it becomes subjec-tive. Furthermore the researcher will actively affect the observed subjects. Furthermore the observer will be a part of the social dynamic and during observations this should be taken into account. An-other researcher might interpret the social dynamics differently. Hence anAn-other researcher might reach another result (Kawulich, 2015).
Though they lead to subjective answers and potentially different interpretations, these participant observations give data that would be hard to gather otherwise. Furthermore, the role of participant gives the researcher the possibility to increasingly go into depth with the data.
Looking at both benefits and constraints, the qualitative participant observations have been chosen.
This is because the benefits of the knowledge received out-weigh the subjectivity and potential bias.
In order to limit potential bias and subjectivity of the participant observations, the qualitative inter-views are used to back up findings from the participant observation. The qualitative interinter-views will add to the credibility of the observations if they seem to point in the same direction.
Quantitative questionnaire
Several aspects should be considered when looking at the validity and reliability of quantitative data.
Validity looks at the quality of the data and if the researcher measures what he/she is trying to in-vestigate. When asking children to fill out a questionnaire, there is a risk that they will not under-stand the questions. To limit misunderunder-standings and to make sure that the children understood the questions, the young children either had a parent assisting them or another adult to read the
ques-tions and possible answers and explain it for them. For the older children an adult was present to answer potential questions and heighten the validity.
That all respondents live in Copenhagen will affect the validity, as it will not take account for geo-graphical differences. As the questionnaire is quantitative, there will be no in-depth answer and there will therefore be no explanation of why the children answered as they did. The answers will hence not be used as absolute answers, instead they will be used as pointers towards what children find important in the service, and who influences their purchase decision.
Reliability considers the consistency of the research and if it is repeatable. Having another research-er retest the questionnaire to see if they reach same result can increase reliability considresearch-erably.
Though this would be beneficial, it has been beyond the scope of this thesis.