Fear of Flying

: A Qualitative Exploration of Fear Injury in Paraglider Pilots

Abstract

High-risk sport participation has grown exponentially over the past two decades, yet sport psychology research has historically focused on motivations for engagement, leaving a notable gap concerning how high-risk sport athletes respond to adversity. The purpose of this thesis was to construct a substantive, experienced based understanding of fear injury, a community-derived construct describing a form of performance impairment in paraglider pilots. Using a qualitative design situated within an interpretivist paradigm, this thesis presents three empirical studies that collectively construct a grounded theory of fear injury, demonstrate how fear injury is experienced over time, and explore a potential intervention.
Study 1 (Chapter 2) used a Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, drawing on data from 38 semi-structured interviews to understand fear injury and construct an initial grounded theory. Fear injury was characterised as a response to an adverse event experienced as sudden, uncontrollable, and confusing, marked by a collapse of trust in skills and equipment, a shift from intellectual to experiential risk appraisal, heightened irrational fear, embodied fear responses, and psychosocial disruption. Study 2 (Chapter 3) employed a longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis to follow ten pilots over six months and identified three distinct, non-linear trajectories: improving, fluctuating, and stagnating, highlighting the roles of identity renegotiation and social support in facilitating recovery. Study 3 (Chapter 4) used focused ethnography to explore how wing control training may contribute to the prevention and recovery of fear injury through a balance of challenge and support, graded exposure, and instructor modelling of vulnerability. Across the three studies, fear injury was understood as a distinct construct that aligns with the survival with impairment trajectory yet remains conceptually separable from related constructs. Overall, the findings in this thesis make a meaningful contribution to the sport psychology literature by establishing fear injury as a distinct psychological construct and demonstrating how it is experienced, navigated, and
potentially recovered from over time. In addition to advancing theoretical and empirical knowledge, this thesis contributes to applied practice by offering evidence-informed recommendations for individual pilots, instructors, and the broader paragliding community, and by providing a foundation for future research in paragliding and other high-risk contexts.

Date of Award	3 Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Portsmouth
Supervisor	Richard Thelwell (Supervisor), Daniel Brown (Supervisor) & Kate Shakespeare (Supervisor)