Chapter 5. Off to greener pitches? 109 5.3 Methodology Data This chapter’s study is based on the same data that were used in the previous chapter17. These data contain 10,205,331 individual membership records, which are distributed over 2778 clubs and nine playing seasons between the 15th of August 2005 and the 15th of May 2014. Because the focus of this study is on transfers between clubs, these data were subsequently used to identify if members changed clubs between playing seasons. If a club member ended his or her membership during or at the end of one playing season and started a new membership at a different club within the following season, this was marked as a club transfer. These criteria produced a total of 157,869 club transfers within the nine playing season timeframe18. Measures Ethnic background As in the previous chapter, I continue to use twelve categories for the ethnic background of members (see chapter 2 for its rationale). The first six of these categories are single nationality backgrounds: 1) Dutch, 2) Turkish, 3) Moroccan, 4) Surinamese, 5) Antillean and 6) Indonesian. The remaining six categories refer to sociocultural regions that include various countries: 7) Northern/Western/Southern European and Anglo-Saxon, 8) Middle and Eastern European, 9) North African and Muslim Asian, 10) Sub-Saharan African, 11) Non-Muslim Asian and Oceanian (excluding Australia and New Zealand) and 12) Middle and South American.19 To assign ethnic backgrounds to members, I use their country of birth and that of their parents. If both parents were born in the Netherlands, a member is categorized as having a Dutch background, regardless of their own country of birth. If either parent is born outside of the Netherlands, the country of birth of the individual is used to determine his or her 17 See the methods section of chapter 4 for a more detailed explanation. All presented results are based on calculations by the author using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands. Under certain conditions, these microdata are accessible for statistical and scientific research. For further information: microdata@cbs.nl. 18 Because transfers were measured between playing seasons, a timeframe of nine playing seasons allows for a maximum of eight transfers per member. 19 See Appendix A for a detailed list of all countries per category.
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