Qualitative research aims to deeply understand people, so ask yourself who it is you are trying to understand. Who is best to help you answer your research questions? There are many ways to categorise people, for instance, by:

• Sporting code 
• Level of sporting participation/engagement 
• Demographic group: age, gender, ethnicity, location, etc. 
• Key relationships, for example, parents of children who play sport 
• Role within the sporting ecosystem, such as coach, funder, facility provider, etc. 
• Seniority or level in a hierarchy 

Often, the details of who you want to study will affect how you conduct your study. For instance, if you want to recruit people from a very specific niche, it might be easier to conduct one-on-one interviews rather than gathering a focus group. Or if you’re studying young people who don’t visit sport facilities, you may choose to ‘go where the people are’ and gather insights from social media.

Recruiting respondents

Once you know who you want to talk to, you need to decide how you’ll engage with them. With some research methods, like interviews and focus groups, you’ll need to explicitly invite people to participate and share their views. So think about how you can contact these people. For instance:

• Use an email list from your sports club 
• Recruit via your social media page 
• Directly approach people at sports grounds 

With other research methods, such as observation or analysis of social media commentary, you may not need to invite people to participate in the research because you will be studying them at arm’s length.