The findings of this study have contributed insights and identified knowledge gaps in the fields of Sport for Development and broader social integration studies in Europe. Specifically, novel and surprising findings pertaining to native background youth in this study suggest that participation frequency, membership duration and certain recruitment methods may have adverse effects on social integration outcomes. For immigrant background youth in the study, two findings were especially noteworthy and have potential to be adapted to future integration and inclusion policy in VSCs. First, religiosity was found to have a positive effect on immigrant background youth’s social integration outcomes, suggesting either that football clubs have done an outstanding job in accommodating potential religious needs for this group, or that religion, and particularly minority religion, is simply not the integration barrier that it is made out to be.
Immigrant background respondents in this study also showed a unique and positive response to being recruited directly by football clubs in regard to social integration, which could inform VSC recruitment styles and practices.
A less obvious contribution of this study involves elements of the measurement tool.
Employing a multi-indicator questionnaire according to Esser’s four social integration
dimensions measured quantitatively on a Likert scale has been done before (Zwahlen et al., 2018). However, the specific items and combinations of items used to measure each social integration dimension are still being developed and modified by researchers. This study built on previous work by adapting items from other studies while introducing ten original items to be tested (inter04, inter06, cult03, cult05, cult06, cult07, place02, place03, place04 ad place05) (see Appendix C). Of these ten new items, seven passed reliability testing and were among the 17 items retained for data analysis. In fact, the placement dimension of social integration, which yielded the highest Cronbach’s Alpha score of the four social integration dimensions, was measured by six items, four of which were original. Conclusions made about social integration are only as valid as the methods used to measure social integration, and this study has contributed to improving these measurements.
Limitations
Conclusions of this study suffer from the small, nonrandom sample used, which has particularly affected analysis of outcomes for immigrant background responses. This small sample size has resulted in a high margin of error, especially in data analysis related to the first two research questions.
Additionally, the response rate for the questionnaire used in this study could not be calculated due to the fact that the exact number of relevant recipients was unknown to the researcher. This was due to the player privacy restrictions of NFF, which required that only NFF Oslo access respondent contact information. Because the NFF Oslo database from which
contact information for recipients came from was out of date, many people outside the study’s sample frame were invited to participate. It is also speculated by the researcher that up-to-date contact information for current players was probably not maintained in the FIKS system for all 16-19-year-old players. Thus, it is unknown how many of those who received an invitation to the questionnaire were in fact intended recipients, and while the exact response rate is unknown, it is presumed by the researcher to be quite low. The fact that random sampling was not used also means that findings cannot be generalized to youth in the Oslo area.
As with any study employing a voluntary questionnaire, this study ran the risk that only the most enthusiastic and active players chose to respond. This would likely have resulted in an overestimation of social integration scores, weakening the study’s validity and reliability.
Overestimation of social integration scores may also have occurred as a result of NFF Oslo distributing the online questionnaire link. Despite the fact that the invitation email emphasized that the research project was to be carried out independent of NFF (see Appendix D),
respondents may have still associated them with the project, encouraging social desirability bias.
The age group of participants, which was 16-19 years old, also likely limited the study’s validity as high dropout rates from sports affect this age group. According to Ungdata, “while 72% and 69% of Norwegian boys and girls, respectively, are engaged in organized sport at the age of 14, only 42% and 28% report engaging in organized sport at the age of 19” (Bakken, 2017, p. 445). This suggests another possible avenue to overestimation of social integration scores in the data because younger youth players who did not feel socially integrated and may have scored lower have likely already quit playing by the time they reach the 16-19 year-old age group. Those who remain playing as 16-, 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds are likely those who have had the best football club experiences.
Finally, while reliability testing was conducted for items used in the measurement tool for this study, analytical testing for validity was not. Therefore, the original items developed in this
study, which have not been tested for validity by previous researchers, are not known to be valid. This applies to seven items used in the data analysis of the study, five of which measured the placement dimension. The undetermined validity of these items brings the validity of the findings of the study into question, particularly those related to the placement dimension.