NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Dehcho Region

Tags: health, mental health, social support, recreation, physical health, women's health

Objective(s): To determine how sport and recreation are to be understood within contexts of gender and community change in rural areas.

Project Description: The purpose of this study is to: 1) explore roles that sport and recreation clubs play as community places for rural women; 2) examine the influence of curling and curling clubs on the social lives and health of rural women; 3) utilize Photovoice, a participatory qualitative research method, to work with rural women in photographing, documenting, and expressing their perspectives on their local club and its social and health influences in their lives; 4) understand how these sport and recreation activities and meanings differ for women across selected diverse rural communities in Canada; and 5) determine how sport and recreation are to be understood within contexts of gender and community change in rural areas. The project’s intent is to determine the nature of women’s involvement in organized sport and recreation activities in rural Canada, and to assess their perceptions of the influence of these activities on their individual and social health, women who curl in rural curling clubs in the Northwest Territories will be provided with cameras and asked to record in log books and take pictures that depict roles that curing clubs have played as sport and community places and of how curling and clubs influence their social, mental, and physical health. These pictures and logbooks will form the basis of a subsequent focus group where the pictures and log book data will be discussed. The researcher wishes to document participants' first-hand experience of rural life and curling’s influence on rural women’s health and social well-being is very important information that only they have. With participants' permission, photographs and the information they share may be presented to others through journals, publications, and at conferences and meetings. Their views may help to influence the social, sport, and health programs and policies that are put in place for rural women. Results may also help people in rural settings think about rural women’s health, sport, and social needs and make changes. Participants may benefit personally from participation by gaining more information about curling and rural women’s health and a sense of empowerment by being part of the research. Participants will be sent a copy of the final report of the study and this will be shared with any and all other parties who express an interest in our work and want to see the results. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from January 2, 2012 to April 30, 2012.