Communication with Disabled Fans at Sports Events: Approaches, Challenges, and Opportunities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for focusing your work on this important and global topic of fan accessibility and the manner in which organizations communicate about accessibility features. This type of work is critical for the disability population and inclusion. I have outlined some questions and concerns below.

 

There is some confusion about the purpose of this work. At times, you state and it seems the focus is on developing a framework for evaluating accessibility or communication about accessibility. Other times, you state and focus on results related to how well clubs offer accessibility features. Some clarity on this would help. I noticed this when reading the abstract, then the introduction, and then the conclusion. This is highlighted by the lack of research question, hypothesis, or clear purpose statement – which could help resolve this.

 

Line 112 – Add a period at the end of the sentence ending with “… to key accessibility information”.

 

Line 242 – Around this area, it would strengthen the manuscript by providing a specific purpose statement for this work: “The purpose of this paper is to …”

 

Lines 254-258 – You repeat the risks of using LLM assistance. Please evaluate this paragraph for a cleaner presentation.

 

Lines 268-270 – Error on the reference.

 

You include Figure 1 as a strong visual of the methodology, but you do not reference Figure 1 in the text. A reference to the figure should come in the text before displaying the figure.

 

Line 277 – Data are plural, so it should be “Primary data were gathered …”

 

In the Phase 1: Data Collection, please explain why “club officials” were identified as your sample. Explain what you mean by “club officials” (e.g., communications teams?). Explain how you identified which people to invite to participate, how many were invited, how many agreed to participate and how many declined. Explain why you targeted these 11 European football clubs and why not other organizations in other leagues or locations or levels. Explain details of how this sample provided a diverse and comprehensive view of disability accommodations practices – how did you anticipate this beforehand, and what are examples of how these clubs offer different cultures, sizes, environments, etc.?

 

Explain how long interviews lasted with participants and the line of questioning with sample questions pointing to an interview guide of all questions.

 

When you state that “we manually identified and tagged key themes, patterns, and concepts …” it suggests the research team made decisions on these themes, patterns, and concepts. What happened if researchers disagreed? Please explain this process with greater detail and transparency.

 

Line 307 – Error on reference.

 

Please reference Figure 2 in your text prior to including the figure.

 

Line 314 - Error on reference.

 

Please reference Figure 3 in your text prior to including the figure.

 

Line 344 - Error on reference.

 

Line 357 – In this sentence, you use the phrase “fans with special needs” but you use “disability” in the rest of the manuscript. I recommend “disabilities” or some version and avoiding “special needs”.

 

Line 365 – Error on reference.

 

Line 378 – The document seems to pick up mid-sentence here. Please correct.

 

Please reference Table 1 before including the table.

 

Please reference Figure 4 before including the figure.

 

Line 432 – You shift to active voice here (e.g., “We now …” “Let’s evaluate …”). Please maintain past-tense within the manuscript since the actions have already been conducted.

 

Line 435 – You have bolded text here but it should not be.

 

In the concluding paragraph in the findings section, you write in vague terms. Instead of stating “we identified key success factors”, list what those factors are to provide a stronger summarization of the findings. Same for the groupings and benchmarks – what are they? This seems true for the findings section. The discussion actually provides more detail about your findings. My recommendation is to be explicit in the findings section about what you found from the data collection, and use the discussion to explain why that matters, how it informs your model, and how it situates within prior work.

 

Line 455 – Should it be “… we recommend …”?

 

You mention COVID-19 at the beginning and end of the paper, but it is unclear how the pandemic actually relates to this study’s focus. Clubs may have already been providing these services and communicating about it well or poorly prior to COVID-19. It is unclear that anything related to the pandemic impacted clubs’ communication about accessibility features. Either this needs to be made clearer (if there were impacts) or it may be worth exploring the option to eliminate the connection to COVID-19 because it is not obvious as to why a connection was made in the writing.

 

Line 536 – The sentence on universal design reads awkwardly. There may be missing punctuation or the words “universal design” at the beginning are out of place.

 

Line 539 – Similar to the previous statement, sections of this paragraph read awkwardly as they seem to have misplaced words and missing punctuation.

 

Lines 546-548 – This is a short, one-sentence paragraph and seems out of place or incomplete.

 

Please reference Table 2 before including the table.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you for your thoughtful feedback and for recognizing the importance of our work on fan accessibility and organizational communication about accessibility features. We appreciate your detailed review and have addressed your questions and concerns as follows:

1. Purpose of the Work: We acknowledge the confusion regarding the purpose of our work. This study investigates how effectively European football clubs communicate and implement accessibility features for disabled fans, aiming to develop a comprehensive framework for evaluating these practices.
2. Line 112: We added a period at the end of the sentence ending with “… to key accessibility information.”
3. Line 242: We strengthened the manuscript by providing a specific purpose statement: The purpose of this study is to evaluate how effectively European football clubs communicate and implement accessibility features for disabled fans and to develop a comprehensive framework for enhancing these practices.
4. Lines 254-258: We revised this paragraph to avoid repetition and present the risks of using LLM assistance more clearly.
5. Lines 268-270: We corrected the error in the reference.
6. Figure 1: We referenced Figure 1 in the text before displaying it to ensure it is properly integrated into the manuscript.
7. Line 277: We corrected the sentence to read “Primary data were gathered …” to reflect the plural form of "data."
8. Phase 1: Data Collection: Sample Identification: We identified “club officials”, we explain how you identified which people to invite to participate, how many were invited, how many agreed to participate …
9. Interview Duration and Guide: The interviews with club officials lasted between 30 to 60 minutes, providing ample time to explore various aspects of communication and accessibility practices for disabled fans. The line of questioning was structured around an interview guide that included both open-ended and specific questions aimed at understanding the clubs' approaches to disability support. Sample questions included: "How do you assess your organization's approach to disabled fans?", "What are the obstacles you see to the participation of disabled fans at sports events?", and "What adaptations do you offer to disabled fans to promote their attendance at the matches?" These questions were designed to elicit detailed responses about the policies, challenges, and strategies related to accessibility. The full interview guide covered key areas such as ticketing challenges, venue accessibility, specific needs of disabled fans, and the clubs' communication efforts to encourage attendance by fans with special needs.
10. Comment: When you state that “we manually identified and tagged key themes, patterns, and concepts …” it suggests the research team made decisions on these themes, patterns, and concepts. What happened if researchers disagreed? Please explain this process with greater detail and transparency. Answer: In cases where there were disagreements on the themes or patterns identified, the research team conducted consensus meetings to discuss the divergent codes and interpretations. These meetings facilitated deliberation and justification of coding decisions, ensuring that final themes were agreed upon through consensus or, when necessary, by majority decision. This process helped to reduce individual bias and enhanced the validity of the thematic framework developed from the data.
11. Line 307: We corrected the error in the reference.
12. Figure 2:  We referenced Figure 2 in the text.
13. Line 314: We corrected the error in the reference.
14. Figure 3: We referenced Figure 3 in the text.
15. Line 344: We corrected the error in the reference.
16. Line 357: We replaced the phrase “fans with special needs” with “fans with disabilities” to maintain consistency throughout the manuscript and avoid the term "special needs."
17. Line 365: We corrected the error in the reference.
18. Line 378: We corrected the sentence to ensure it does not start mid-sentence and flows coherently.
19. Table 1: We referenced Table 1 in the text prior to including the table.
20. Figure 4: We referenced Figure 4 in the text prior to including the figure.
21. Line 432: We revised the sentence to maintain past tense, as the actions have already been conducted. The corrected sentence is: "We applied our proposed model to evaluate a club that was not included in our initial analysis. We evaluated AC Milan, one of the most historically prestigious clubs in world football. For details of the assessment, refer to Appendix A."
22. Line 435: We removed the bold formatting from the text to ensure consistency.
23. Concluding Paragraph in Findings Section: We revised the concluding paragraph to explicitly list the key success factors, groupings, and benchmarks identified from our data collection.
24. Line 455: We corrected the sentence to read “… we recommend …” to ensure proper grammar and clarity.
25. COVID-19 Mention: We acknowledge that the connection between COVID-19 and the study's focus on accessibility and communication is not established in the current manuscript. We eliminated the references to COVID-19 to avoid confusion. 
26. Line 536: We revised the sentence on universal design to improve clarity and ensure proper punctuation. The revised sentence will read: "Universal design principles should be integrated into all aspects of accessibility planning to ensure inclusivity for all fans."
27. Line 539: We revised this paragraph to correct misplaced words and ensure proper punctuation for better readability.
28. Lines 546-548: We expanded a short, one-sentence paragraph to provide more context and ensure it fits seamlessly within the manuscript.
29. Table 2: We referenced Table 2 in the text before including it to ensure it was properly integrated into the manuscript.

All changes have been marked in red for your convenience.

Thank you once again for your valuable feedback. We believe these revisions will significantly improve the clarity and quality of our manuscript.

Best regards,

authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your submission. It was an interesting read and a novel approach to an underexplored area. 

Overall, I commend you for the research conducted. I feel it adds value to the subject area and provides scope for future researchers to develop your findings further. I do have some queries that I hope can be addressed before this paper can be considered for publication. My queries predominately relate to the reporting of how you produced and analysed the data. Below, I have listed specific points I would appreciate you consider and address as part of your revised manuscript. 

 

In your method section you mentioned multiple randomised sampling validation checks had taken place. There was no further elaboration offered and I feel it'll be helpful to understand what type of checks took place. 

Why were eleven clubs selected for your sample? What was the rationale behind this number and choice of clubs? Was selection of the club to represent their respective territory/nation down to convenience? Or was it theoretical? This needs to be made clear. 

Please can you provide a sentence or two on how the LLM was specifically used to analyse and evaluate the data? You refer to the use of prompts but it's not clear the shape and form of these prompts. Please can you describe the prompts used as well as why ten iterations were used (is this a particular standard for this method? Or was it selected by the authors based on a sense of robustness?)

When collecting and analysing the data for the eleven clubs, how did you ensure consistency of interpretation across the different cultural contexts of the clubs? This is in reference to understanding of disability, which can be culturally influenced. For example, is the social model of disability, part of your theoretical framework, understood and accepted across the contexts used for the data? 

You mentioned that a robust evaluation of categories took place in Phase 3. Please can you elaborate further here? I'm left guessing as to the evaluation used, rather than being clearly told. 

Please review some of your manuscript as there are sections of duplication or formatting issues. Below, I've listed some of these issues:

Page 10, 357-366 is largely duplicated. Lines, 367 - 376 is the same as page 9, lines 346 - 355.

Page 12, lines 403-412 = duplication. 

The reference to AC Milan as an additional example can perhaps be preceded with a clear title. Currently, it's not easy to follow.

Page 15, line 539, 'Poor communication means exclusion'  - is this supposed to be a title for a section?

Page 15, line 542 - doesn't make sense. Should 'wounded' be 'wandered'?

Page 15 lines, 539 - 545 - doesn't make much sense and should be rewritten

 

I believe your manuscript will be significantly stronger once the above has been considered. I'd like to thank you for your submission and I hope to a receive a response to my comments. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you for your thoughtful feedback and for recognizing the importance of our work on fan accessibility and organizational communication about accessibility features. We appreciate your detailed review and have addressed your questions and concerns as follows:

Comment: In your method section you mentioned multiple randomised sampling validation checks had taken place. There was no further elaboration offered and I feel it'll be helpful to understand what type of checks took place. Answer: Validation checks were: - Outputs from two LLM models (e.g., GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet) were compared using randomized samples to check for any model-specific biases. - We conducted ten iterations of model refinement using Large Language Models (LLMs), alternating between Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4. -  LLM-generated output was cross-validated with researchers' manual coding.

Comment: Why were eleven clubs selected for your sample? What was the rationale behind this number and choice of clubs? Was selection of the club to represent their respective territory/nation down to convenience? Or was it theoretical? This needs to be made clear. Answer: We have addressed the comment regarding the selection of the eleven clubs – please see pages 7 and 8 in red text.

Comment: Please can you provide a sentence or two on how the LLM was specifically used to analyse and evaluate the data? You refer to the use of prompts but it's not clear the shape and form of these prompts. Please can you describe the prompts used as well as why ten iterations were used (is this particular standard for this method? Or was it selected by the authors based on a sense of robustness?) Answer: The prompt was:

*The file contains questions and responses from various football clubs. Our aim is to investigate how well the communication model for disability accommodations aligns with disabled fans' needs, and how these accommodations are communicated during individual football events across selected football organizations. Just based on the examples provided in the file, develop a communication model that reflects the varying levels of adaptation for disabled fans.*

Methodology:

1. Prompt Testing

   - Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 5 iterations of identical prompt

   - GPT-4: 5 iterations of identical prompt

2. Analysis Process

   - Document all outputs (5+5)

   - Identify consistent patterns within each model

   - Compare findings between models

   - Note significant variations

3. Validation

   - Cross-reference consistencies across all 10 iterations

   - Flag differences and potential hallucinations

   - Extract reliable findings supported by both models

 

Purpose: Ensure analytical robustness and minimize bias through systematic iteration and cross-model validation.

 

We added text to the article: An example of the prompt was: "The file contains questions and responses from various football clubs. We aim to investigate how well the communication model for disability accommodations aligns with disabled fans' needs, and how these accommodations are communicated during individual football events across selected football organizations. Based on the examples provided in the file, develop a communication model that reflects the varying levels of adaptation for disabled fans."

 

Comment: When collecting and analysing the data for the eleven clubs, how did you ensure consistency of interpretation across the different cultural contexts of the clubs? This is in reference to understanding of disability, which can be culturally influenced. For example, is the social model of disability, part of your theoretical framework, understood and accepted across the contexts used for the data? Answer: We used a standardized interview guide across all clubs, ensuring that the same questions were posed consistently. To maintain consistency, we implemented a process of cross-checking where multiple researchers reviewed the data from each club. Discrepancies or cultural nuances in the interpretation of disability-related practices were discussed in consensus meetings.

Comment: You mentioned that a robust evaluation of categories took place in Phase 3. Please can you elaborate further here? I'm left guessing as to the evaluation used, rather than being clearly told. Answer:

Structured evaluation of categories was conducted as follows:

This process involved three key steps:

1. Systematic analysis of club responses: Each response was methodically examined to extract specific details about the clubs' accessibility and inclusion initiatives, ensuring a comprehensive qualitative data analysis.
2. Quantitative scoring on a 1-5 scale: Clubs were scored across seven predefined criteria:

• Dedicated Personnel: Availability and specialization of staff focused on accessibility.
• Infrastructure: Accessibility of both physical and digital facilities.
• Ticketing: Systems that facilitate accessible ticket purchases.
• Specific Adaptations: Tailored adjustments for individuals with disabilities.
• Engagement: Efforts to promote active participation and representation of disabled fans.
• Feedback: Mechanisms for gathering and responding to feedback from fans with special needs.
• Challenge Management: Proficiency in identifying and addressing accessibility challenges.

Scores ranged from 1 (lowest development) to 5 (highest development), assigned based on the explicit descriptions in the responses.

3. Categorization of clubs into development tiers based on the average scores across all criteria, clubs were grouped into three distinct categories:

• Tier 1 (Elite Performers)
• Tier 2 (Solid Performers)
• Tier 3 (Developing Systems)

 

This structured process ensured that the evaluation was transparent, repeatable, and capable of providing actionable insights for comparative analysis.

 

About pointing out the duplication and formatting issues in our manuscript, we have made the following corrections:

1. Page 10, Lines 357-366 and Lines 367-376: We have removed the duplicated content and ensured each section is unique and relevant.
2. Page 12, Lines 403-412: We have eliminated the duplicated content in this section.
3. Reference to AC Milan: We have preceded the reference to AC Milan with a clear title to improve readability and flow. (please, see page 13 – red text)

4. Page 15, Line 539: We have rewritten this section to ensure it makes sense and is coherent. (please, see page 15 – red text)
5. Page 15, Line 542: We have rewritten this section to ensure it makes sense and is coherent. (please, see page 15 – red text)
6. Page 15, Lines 539-545: We have rewritten this section to ensure it makes sense and is coherent. (please, see page 15 – red text)

All changes have been marked in red for your convenience.

Thank you once again for your valuable feedback. We believe these revisions will significantly improve the clarity and quality of our manuscript.

Best regards,

authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for addressing the initial corrections and concerns. This paper is improved and offers a strong contribution.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, 

Thank you for your considered response and for incorporating reviewer suggestions. 

Based on the changes made, I'm happy with the quality of the paper and commend you for its originality and contribution to scholarship. 

Many thanks,

Reviewer