Fully-funded PhD - Fostering Wellbeing and Mental Health of Elite Soccer Match Officials

Elite soccer officiating is a profession with substantial physical and mental demands with the responsibility to maintain integrity in the game. Match officials face a variety of stressors, including public scrutiny, and abuse both on and off the field. Failure to effectively cope with these demands can lead to increased error, inability to deal with non-sport life events, which may affect wellbeing, and lead to dropout.

Considering the complexity of the role and dynamic performance environment, match officials’ ability to cope effectively depends on the interaction of multiple factors, including socio-demographics, personality, stress appraisals, coping resources and social support networks. This exciting fully funded PhD provides an opportunity to pursue postgraduate study within Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport in collaboration with the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) governing body responsible for the training, development, and mentoring of elite soccer match officials in England.

The PhD, as part of our growing, vibrant doctoral community, will use mixed methods approaches to understand how individual and environmental factors interact to protect and support match officials’ mental health and wellbeing. Findings will provide PGMOL with effective and meaningful evidence-based interventions to support and protect match officials’ mental health and wellbeing.

Project aims and objectives

Understand elite soccer match officials’ mental health and wellbeing needs and protective factors. Develop evidence-based interventions for support.

Objectives:

• Conduct a cross-sectional study to understand the interplay of socio-demographics (such as age, gender, culture, previous experience), personality traits, appraisals, coping resources and social support networks in predicting the prevalence of mental health and wellbeing among soccer match officials. 
• Understand soccer match officials’ lived experiences of mental health symptoms and wellbeing to facilitate the identification of individual, organisational, social and environmental barriers and enablers to foster collective behaviour change to protect match officials’ mental health. Understand mental health practitioners’ perspectives on supporting mental health officials, barriers and facilitators.
• Design and implement interventions informed by knowledge from the previous points, including evaluations of reliability and validity.
• Provide PGMOL and applied mental health practitioners with applied interventions at individual, organisational and social levels (such as media campaigns) to improve elite soccer match officials’ mental health, wellbeing and welfare in the game.