”Det är världens största sport, det är inte nån leksak” - En kvalitativ studie av fotbollsdomares användande av copingstrategier och en diskussion kring möjligheten att applicera dessa inom socialt arbete

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to understand how football referees handle threats and aggression in their line of work. By understanding how football referees handle these situations, we wanted to highlight the strategies they use and discuss whether these strategies could also be useful within the field of social work. Our empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six football referees operating in southern Sweden. Our results showed that the examined football referees did not consider themselves to be exposed, despite descriptions of events that to us were clear examples of threats and aggression. We interpret this as the referees not reco-gnizing their exposure, due to the fact that they have several coping resources and effective coping strategies. The coping strategies we identified were: "developing self-reliance and optimism", "positive thinking", "developing confidence and optimism", "displacement", "selective ignoring", "social support ventilating feelings" "seeking social support" and "positive avoidance ". In our conclusion we discuss how we believe that the identified coping strategies could be useful within the social work field.