Transgender Inclusion in Cricket: University Research Project

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Unistudent500
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Hi everyone:

I am a student at the University of South Australia, and I am posting here to see if you would be interested in participating in my short survey. I received permission from Buzz and this project has been approved by the University of South Australia's Human Research Ethics Committee Ethics Protocol 203610.

My research topic is exploring transgender inclusion in the AFL and Cricket Australia. This entails analysing policy documents, news media articles, and collecting and understanding fans thoughts and perspectives on this matter. To collect and understand fans views on transgender inclusion, I have created a survey that should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. The survey is completely voluntary, and if you decide to participate, you will remain entirely anonymous. The only information collected will be your gender, age range, Australian state of residence, and favourite cricket team. The main part of the survey will contain three open-ended questions that simply ask you your thoughts and perspectives on the inclusion of transgender athletes in cricket and broader sport.

For more information about the study and your participation, please click the link to the survey:

https://doit.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form ... txnUYB5Ayi

Thank you for your time.
Unistudent500
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Thanks to all who have completed the survey! It is really appreciated. It is still open for more responses.
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yourhero
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Are you going to stop back in at some point and publish results? Would be interesting to see.

Also, question for you. Given the two topics posed - Transgender Inclusion in Cricket & Racism in the NRL, respectfully of course, are you going into this with a preconceived notion, looking to validate a personal position?
Unistudent500
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Thanks for these questions! To answer your first question: Yes! If people are interested, I can post a summary of the results when my thesis is all said and done. That won't be for a while, but I will be sure to post something.

As for your second question, the racism in NRL study is actually another researcher, a colleague of mine, so I can't speak for them. For my study, I would say I am going into this with some ideas, or you could say hypothesises, about what I think I will find based on the literature I have read. However, the way I am going about my methodology and analysis is to allow the data to speak for itself. It wouldn't be good research if I went into it with a preconceived notion of what I think will be said or a goal of having the data say something I want it to say. Bias always plays a role in research (and really anything we do), but I have methods to control this as best as I can. Hopefully that quells some of your concerns, but I am happy to speak more about it if you want!
Unistudent500
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The survey is still open if anyone would like to participate! I'm still looking for more responses too. Thank you to everyone who has checked it out.

Link: https://doit.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form ... txnUYB5Ayi
Unistudent500
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Thank you to everyone who has filled out the survey! This is my last call to get any responses. It is still open if you would like to fill it out and didn't get a chance: https://doit.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form ... txnUYB5Ayi
Unistudent500
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Hi everyone,
Apologies for the long delay in coming back and posting a results summary update. There were hiccups throughout the process, but the research has now been completed and submitted to examiners. Thank you again for those that participated, and the mods and admins for allowing me to post here.
What I am going to do is provide a simple summary of the results from the surveys that you participated in (found below), and when an article is written in the future, it shall be posted here so you can see the progress of the research. If you have any concerns or questions that you don’t want to post here, please feel free to email me at maccj014@mymail.unisa.edu.au

This research analysed AFL and Cricket Australia (CA) policies, Australian news media, and fans’ perspectives on trans inclusion in sport. To ascertain footy and cricket fans’ perspectives, two different but similar surveys were created: a footy fan survey and a cricket fan survey. The surveys were qualitative in nature, meaning fans wrote out their ideas, thoughts, and feelings in open-ended text boxes to question prompts. After cleaning the data (removing unfinished surveys) there were 123 footy responses and 97 cricket responses (n=220). The results from the surveys were complex and mixed.
In total, over 60% of fans surveyed shared explicitly negative attitudes towards the inclusion of trans people in sport. For fans that demonstrated positive sentiments towards trans inclusion, this was most often displayed as support for the policy changes that have taken place in the AFL and CA, and a desire for respect and inclusion of trans people. Some fans from this cohort elaborated that inclusion should focus on making trans people feel welcome, and implored sport organizations to do more for trans people.
There was a difference in the amount of positive sentiment between footy and cricket with surveyed cricket fans being more inclined to advocate for full inclusion than footy fans. This difference between cricket fans and AFL fans may be because cricket has a longer history of taking on inclusive initiatives, the contemporary work CA has done around LGBTQ+ inclusion, or the difference in rules compared to football (i.e., non-contact vs. contact—a point raised by a number of fans in the surveys).
The surveys differed from the news media as the fans demonstrated more diversity in sentiment and displayed more scepticism and rejection towards the inclusion of trans people. This was most often shared as concerns towards the inclusion of trans women in women’s sport (e.g., concerns around testosterone management and other biological and physiological factors), and at times, these concerns would be vitriolic and transphobic. The vitriolic responses would most often misgender purposefully, question the legitimacy of trans athletes (or trans identities entirely), or use slurs.
However, whether participants displayed positive or negative sentiments towards inclusion, most responses believed there needed to be rules and eligibility criteria for trans people’s inclusion in sport, especially for trans women. How these rules would apply and what aspects they would focus on differed, but many responses highlighted the desire for rules in elite sport and community sport (sometimes wanting them to differ, other times wanting them to be the same across levels), that focused on testosterone or other physiological controls (e.g., size, strength, etc.), and evaluated the genuineness or time of transition (i.e., whether it was before or after puberty). And while some advocated for limited rules, or no rules at all, others wanted sport organizations to form stringent rules that fell along strict lines of biological sex. What was prevalent in many of these responses was the belief that men are inherently better performers of sport, and that this needs to be controlled for trans people to be included.
In summary, while there was positive sentiment towards the inclusion of trans people in sport generally, and a smaller minority believing that sport needs to do more to make trans people feel welcome, there were also a great number of people that demonstrated scepticism or disdain towards including trans people (specifically, trans women), especially in football. And while most believed there needed to be rules in place for inclusion, some believed that rules should focus on sex and exclude trans people from playing in the category that matches their gender.

Thank you once again for participating and allowing me to share my research on this forum. I look forward to sharing some of the work that stems from this.
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