Applied Coaching Research Journal Volume 1 | Page 31

APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018, Vol. 1
Results
The results focus primarily on the START
programme, due to the small number of participants
involved in the Mums’ Movement programme.
Evaluation data was collected from three groups of
START participants (35 young people).
Profile of respondents
An equal number of men and women participated in
the training. The vast majority were students. Half
of the participants were aged 18–19 years old, one-
third were 17 or younger and 15% were 20 years
or older. Almost a quarter (24%) had a physical
disability or learning difficulty. At the start of the
training, participants were active for an average of
four days per week. They were involved in a range
of activities, such as football, karate and running,
as well as walking, housework and dog walking.
Two-thirds of participants said they had previous
experience of working with groups of people to get
them active.
Satisfaction
Participants on the training programme were asked
to rate their overall experience. The average score
was 9.1 out of 10.
Confidence and motivation
Participant feedback was overwhelmingly
positive about the programme, with young
people saying that they had learnt a lot from
the training, that their confidence had grown
and that they felt more motivated to work
with other people to get them active.
The questionnaire data revealed that two-thirds
of participants felt more confident developing
and leading activities at the end of their training.
Three young people, with very high confidence
levels at the beginning (10 out of 10), saw their
score decrease slightly, but overall the training
clearly improved participants’ confidence in leading
activities. This was especially the case for one group
of participants whose confidence score increased
from an average of 5 to an average score of 8 (out
of 10).
“I have improved on my confidence quite a bit. I was
quite a shy person in secondary school and coming
into college was quite a difficult thing.”
START participant
“I think I learnt to handle my patience a bit more.
I can get very agitated when things don’t go my
way, so while we were doing everything I definitely
learnt to handle my patience more.”
START participant
Planning and organising their own events, and
seeing others enjoy them, gave participants a
sense of pride and improved their confidence as a
result. For two groups who had organised a mini
programme of sessions, they reported that seeing
the number of children or young people attend
increase over the duration of the programme was
a boost to their confidence and their enjoyment of
delivering sessions.
“At the start we had 14 students and at the last one
we had 37, because all the tutors had decided to
bring all their students down (to the session).”
START participant
Physical activity
START participants joined the programme with a
range of sport and physical activity experience.
Some were already active and engaged in sport
regularly; others had been sporty at school but had
not continued as they grew older, while others again
didn’t engage in any sport or physical activity.
While increasing participants’ level of physical
activity was not a primary aim of the project, the
pre- and post-questionnaires demonstrate that most
participants became more active as a result of the
training. Two-thirds said they were more physically
active since starting the training (16 out of 25). Only
one was less physically active. Participants became
involved in a range of activities from boxing, Zumba,
basketball, tennis, as well as exercising at home.
Future opportunities
100% of participants said they were motivated to be
part of future leading or coaching opportunities.
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