ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the status of the UK Coaching Framework as a complex intervention, with a view to the ongoing evaluation of its impact on policy and legacy objectives. This analysis uses a set of criteria that have been drawn from the realist approach to evaluation and has been informed by the wider consideration of the potential contribution of a critical realist approach to the study of coaching. A participant development model was drawn up, informed by the perspectives of the stakeholders and integrating some of the strongest features of the model of long-term athlete development and the developmental model of sports participation. The UK Coaching Framework recognizes the need for top-down intervention on the one hand and the central role of the sport and the coach in responding to participant need on the other. Regardless of the level of clarity and detail provided in interventions, dialogue among those responsible for its implementation is both desirable and inevitable.
