Compare methods

	Sport Fandom Autoethnography	Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model
Field	Sport Leisure Studies	Sport Leisure Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Latent structure
Year of origin	2000	2006
Originator	Carolyn Ellis & Arthur Bochner (autoethnography)	Daniel L. Wann
Type	Reflexive qualitative pipeline for narrating and analyzing personal fandom	Mediational model linking identification to well-being via social connections
Seminal source	Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed., pp. 733-768). Sage. ISBN: 9780761915126	Wann, D. L. (2006). Understanding the positive social psychological benefits of sport team identification: The team identification-social psychological health model. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 10(4), 272-296.
Aliases	Fan Autoethnography, Sport Spectator Autoethnography, Self-Narrative of Fandom, Reflexive Fan Inquiry	TI-SPH Model, Team Identification-Social Psychological Health, Wann's Team Identification Health Model
Related	3	3
Summary	Sport fandom autoethnography turns the researcher's own experience of being a fan into systematic qualitative inquiry, using the self as a window onto the culture of fandom. Drawing on the method Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner developed and named, it joins three elements -- auto (the self), ethno (culture), and graphy (the writing process) -- so that personal stories of devotion, ritual, heartbreak, and belonging become evidence about how fandom works. The approach ranges from evocative autoethnography, which writes emotionally compelling scenes that let readers feel the fan's world, to more analytic forms that explicitly theorize the cultural patterns the stories reveal. Rather than surveying fans from the outside, the autoethnographer mines remembered epiphanies, match-day field notes, and personal artifacts to show, from within, what it means to live as a supporter.	The Team Identification-Social Psychological Health (TI-SPH) model, proposed by Daniel Wann in 2006, explains why identifying with a sports team is associated with better psychological well-being. Its central claim is mediational: team identification does not improve well-being directly but does so by fostering social connections, which in turn support social psychological health. A fan who identifies with a team gains a ready-made social group, shared rituals, and a sense of belonging, and it is these connections — not the team's results — that yield the well-being benefits. Wann's model, published in Group Dynamics, drew on social identity theory and his earlier work measuring identification, and it made a crucial distinction between identification with a local team, which can produce enduring social connections, and identification with a distant team, which tends to produce only temporary ones. The framework reframed sport fandom from a potentially trivial or maladaptive pastime into a documented source of social-psychological benefit.