Guidelines for organizing focus groups on IOC’s strategic plan for harassment and abuse 2021-2024 (intern rapport)

The IOC is leading the Olympic Movement in the prevention of harassment and abuse in sport. It is therefore important and necessary to ensure that the roadmap to take safeguarding in sport to scale across the Olympic Movement is led by the IOC, well defined, evidence based and established in consultation with key stakeholders. Furthermore, it is important that the IOCs own policies related to its areas of direct jurisdiction reflect best practice.

The aim of this research project is to define the key objectives for the IOC Safe Sport initiatives 2021-2024 across the main spheres of influence of the IOC, as well as outline strategic intents for 2030. These objectives are to be defined through extensive consultation with key stakeholder groups. In this deliverable, we outline guidelines for organizing the focus groups. The focus groups are used to organize the stakeholder group consultation. In this deliverable, the value of focus groups will be discussed. After that we go into greater detail on hidden structures behind the method, which one needs to consider when organizing focus groups. This research deliverable will serve as a recipe for designing a focus group. It has not the goal to draft and outline the whole dialogue or focus groups protocol.