Enhancing Parent–Child Psychosocial Support in Youth Tennis: The Development, Evaluation, and Evolution of the 5Cs Sport Parenting Workshop

Researchers in sport psychology have positioned parents as having key influential roles in the experiences and development of young athletes in sport. However, there has been a call for greater applied research with sport organizations to engage parents more explicitly in the psychosocial development process of the athlete. Grounded within the British Lawn Tennis Association’s national parent education strategy, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate how two scientist–practitioners developed, implemented, evaluated, and evolved a parent support workshop based on the 5Cs framework. Drawing upon the three phases of Educational Design Research (EDR), the authors explain the processes of workshop design, evaluation, and iterative development through ongoing stakeholder engagement. Following a 2.5-year implementation period involving 255 parents, quantitative and qualitative post-workshop feedback (n = 101 parents) reinforced the utility value, strengths, benefits to learning, and opportunities for improvement. The actioning of parental feedback stimulated further workshop iterations and progressions to national governing body strategy, with additional qualitative research (n = 20 parents) leading to more contextualised workshop resources. This programme of work supports the psychosocial value and relevance of the 5Cs as a framework for enhancing parental knowledge of key behaviours and strategies to reinforce with their child-athlete. Recommendations are offered in terms of advancing methodologies to assess psychosocial behaviour change, conducting longitudinal interventions with parents, coaches, and athletes together, as well as extending and tailoring the workshop to other sports.