Narratives of participation among individuals with physical disabilities: A life-course analysis of athletes' experiences and development in parasport
Section snippets
Narrative inquiry
Within narrative inquiry, people are viewed as meaning-making creatures, and a crucial way to make meaning, as well as communicate these meanings, is through stories (Smith & Sparkes, 2009). This research was underpinned by two assumptions: ontological relativism (i.e., reality is multiple, subjective, and mind-dependent) and epistemological constructionism (i.e., knowledge is subjective and socially constructed) (Smith & Sparkes, 2016). We adopted narrative constructionism as the specific
Results
Five distinct narrative types were identified, representing and constituting differential developmental trajectories and experiences of participation in parasport. For each narrative type, the results are presented as follows: (a) demographic details of participants, (b) a brief summary of the narrative, (c) a temporal description of participants’ parasport trajectory, including the elements and conditions that foster the quantity and quality of participation over time, and (d) an
Discussion
Through narrative inquiry, the unique aim of this paper was to explore the meanings that people with physical disabilities attribute to the quality of their participation in parasport throughout the life-course. This study advances theoretical understandings of participation in parasport by honing in on the subjective or experiential aspects of participation that make an activity feel valuable or meaningful. A timeline approach to data collection and analysis further enabled a perspective on
Acknowledgements
As a part of the Canadian Disability Participation Project, this research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) – Grant # 895-2013-1021. This research was also supported by a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship awarded to Veronica Allan – Award # 767-2015-1633.
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