Intervention optimisation

Aim

The aim was to ensure that the intervention was optimised for participants and that its interest and appeal was maximised for both boys and girls.

Method

A sample session of the intervention was conducted in two schools in the summer term. One Year 5 class in each school was chosen to take part, as these pupils were of the target age but would not be eligible for the study because they would be in Year 6 when the intervention commenced in the autumn term. The sessions were delivered by Bristol City Council staff during a PE lesson. After the sessions, two separate focus groups (one with six boys and one with six girls) were conducted. Class teachers selected pupils with a range of activity levels for the focus groups. The pupils were asked to comment on their enjoyment of the session, their perception of how boys and girls interacted with each other, the teaching style and the ways in which the session could have been improved. Feedback from the first focus groups was used to improve the second sample session. Lessons learnt from all of the focus groups were used to improve the 30 session plans before the intervention commenced.

Focus group discussions were transcribed verbatim and anonymised.

Results

The analysis of the focus groups (n = 4) showed that all pupils were very positive about the sessions and rated them highly. There was no evidence of differences in response from boys and from girls, and therefore data are presented for each theme with indicative quotations from boys and girls where appropriate. The researcher-identified themes were agreed to be (1) variety, (2) teamwork, (3) level of activity, (4) potential improvements and (5) coaching style.

Variety

When the pupils were asked to comment on what they enjoyed, the variety and uniqueness of the activities was a theme that emerged in each of the focus groups. The games were different from those they usually played during PE, and the variety of activities prevented the pupils from getting bored:

I enjoyed the way it was very creative, and it brought new things to our school.

I thought the different activities were good. Say if you started getting bored of the frisbee, you could go onto the other activity.

Teamwork

Another theme that emerged was that pupils enjoyed working in a team and socialising with their classmates. The pupils liked working with others with whom they did not usually socialise and preferred that they did not pick their own teams (i.e. that they were not in a team with just their friends):

Because you get to work as a team and it’s all really fun.

I think it’s good because people you don’t normally spend a lot of time with, you’re on the same team as them.

When asked to comment on the sessions being for boys and girls, all of the pupils agreed that they preferred mixed-sex teams and that they would not have enjoyed the sessions as much had they been single sex. The pupils felt that a mixed session gave them the opportunity to work with pupils of the opposite sex, which they may not always choose to do:

I think it was good to mix up it all together because we might learn to get along more with boys.

Boys don’t normally play with girls and they don’t really work together with them. So, I think it’s good to have a chance to learn and do something with them.

The pupils felt that having mixed teams made the activities and games fairer and that sports should not be exclusive to sex:

I think it’s better with boys because they can catch more and they’re better at stuff.

If they [girls] were playing something, for example, tag and the boys were playing football, if a girl wanted to come in, you wouldn’t say, ‘No, you’re a girl’. You would say, ‘Yeah, come in’.

However, the pupils did sometimes feel that the girls and boys grouped together, despite being on a mixed team:

Some of the girls didn’t pass to the boys and some of the boys didn’t pass to the girls. It did make it a bit unfair.

Level of activity

Most of the pupils thought that the sessions were active and involved plenty of running around:

I think it was really pulse-raising.

It gives you a lot of exercise.

However, some pupils felt that certain aspects of the game or certain people were not active enough:

I don’t think it was active enough because, as he said, if you’re in the goal the whole game, you can’t get out and run.

In particular, the female pupils in school 2 did not think that the session was active enough. They commented that the lack of space and the size of teams limited their ability to be active, and they suggested possible improvements:

There’s always a big huddle. There’s always space over there but we’re always over here.

We could change the size because there were a lot of us and maybe we could do two games at once.

Potential improvements

Several recurring suggestions were made of ways to improve the sessions. Pupils proposed that smaller teams and more space would allow more people to get involved:

You might be able to have two teams which would be better. Instead of everybody being rammed in one game.

Adding more rules to the games was suggested as a way of improving the organisation and structure of the sessions, as well as increasing the level of activity:

I would say everyone at least has to throw it to every person in their group.

The first goal, a girl would have to score it and then once a girl had scored, for the next half of the game, it could then be a boy who scores it.

Other potential improvements included ways in which the games could have been made easier, for example by having bigger balls and bigger goals. The pupils also liked the idea of having more and longer games; however, this would have been difficult within the allocated time.

Coaching style

Pupils were asked to comment on how the Bristol City Council coaches delivered the sessions. In general, the pupils liked the coaches and were very positive about their coaching style. The pupils thought that the coaches gave clear instructions without being too strict:

They were very specific on what you had to do and what the rules were.

They had a way of getting people’s attention . . . and they weren’t strict.

The pupils felt that the coaches were very encouraging with regard to their skill development and keeping everyone active. They liked that the coaches gave good critical feedback and encouraged them to adapt the activities to progress their skills:

. . . if someone had done it wrong, he [the coach] would say, ‘Ah, unlucky. What you could next time is . . .’ He wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, that was really bad’.

I liked the way that when we were doing frisbee they were helping us, giving us techniques.

The only aspect of the coaches’ delivery that the pupils did not like was that the coaches let the pupils choose their own teams and nominated people to be team captains, which they felt made the games slightly unfair:

They made one captain and it made all unfair because we couldn’t say what we wanted.

They [the coaches] could be team leaders and then go, ‘One, two, three. One, two, three’.

Summary

The results from the focus groups with Year 5 pupils showed that the sample sessions were well received by both girls and boys. The pupils enjoyed the sessions because they were fun, varied and different from usual PE lessons and encouraged teamwork with others with whom they did not usually play. Boys and girls enjoyed interacting and felt that the session would not have been as enjoyable had it been single-sex. The pupils liked that the coaches were encouraging and gave good critical feedback, which enabled them to improve their skills. Some of the pupils thought the sessions were active; however, others did not. Girls specifically suggested that smaller teams and more space to spread out would have improved the sessions because this would have enabled more people to get involved simultaneously. Introducing more rules into the games was also suggested, as this could have increased the activity level as well as adding more structure to the sessions. Pupils preferred that teams were chosen for them, rather than choosing their own teams, so that the games were equal and fair.

Results from these focus groups suggest that the revised session content appeals to both boys and girls but highlighted further refinements that were used to improve the 30 session plans and the intervention training programme. Table 4 presents the lessons learned and the changes that were made to the intervention to reflect these.