Chapter 6. Ethnicity matters 127 6.3 Methodological strengths and limitations Reliable data A major obstacle in research on the impact of ethnic background and ethnic group composition is getting enough reliable data. Consequently, an important strength of this study is the vast amount of high-quality data on which it draws. By matching membership data of the Royal Dutch Football Association with government data from Statistics Netherlands, I was able to construct a dataset that includes millions of membership records linked to thousands of clubs and spanning a full decade, as well as members’ individual characteristics. To my knowledge, such a database has never been constructed and analysed before. These data, in the first place, have made it possible to accurately map the ethnic composition of Dutch amateur football clubs at both the national and club level, as well as its development over time. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the number of clubs and variation in club composition have provided a very strong basis to further study the relationship between ethnic organizational composition and membership. In addition to accurate individual level data, this type of research hinges strongly on a large enough pool of diverse organizational units. Not only may the acquirement of such data require costly investments in terms of time and resources, but it is further hindered by the fact that organizational homogenisation reduces the empirical organizational variance required to study it. By including almost all amateur football clubs and memberships of the Netherlands’ most popular sport, this study was able to overcome these obstacles. Finally, a third strength of this study is its longitudinal design. In addition to describing trends over time, the use of data on a large number of consecutive playing seasons, allowed for more robust analyses and inferences than often-used cross-sectional or two-wave data would. Additional strengths The focus of this study on membership of amateur football clubs has a few additional advantages. First and foremost, because amateur football clubs are voluntary associations, membership is optional for each individual citizen. Consequently, we may assume that becoming a member and dropping out as a member of these organizations is primarily the result of a deliberate choice based
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