Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

1989 Publication of first issue of Journal of Applied Sport Psychology

1991 Formation of Board of Sport Psychologists within the Australian Psychological Society

1993 Establishment of “Sport and Exercise Psychology Section” of the British Psychological

Society

2000 Publication of first issue of Psychology of Sport and Exercise

2003 Re-naming International Journal of Sport Psychology as International Journal of Sport and

Exercise Psychology (^)
As you can see from Box 1.3, the discipline of sport and exercise psychology has had
many landmarks since Norman Triplett conducted his cycling studies over a century ago.
Since the mid-1960s, however, many important developments have occurred in this field.
Unfortunately, space restrictions in this chapter prevent a detailed analysis of these
developments. For a more comprehensive account of the history of sport and exercise
psychology, see Brewer and Van Raalte (2002), Feltz and Kontos (2002) and Gill (2000).
Research methods in sport and exercise psychology
In the previous section, I indicated that sport and exercise psychology is commonly
regarded as an applied science. If so, what research methods does it use? As you might
expect, there is a large toolbox of research methods available to sport and exercise
psychologists. One way of classifying these techniques is to distinguish between
traditional quantitative methods (where measurement and statistical analysis are used to
make sense of the data) and more recently developed qualitative approaches (such as
focus groups and grounded theory; see Camic, Rhodes and Yardley, 2003). Incidentally,
reviews of qualitative methods in sport and exercise psychology have been undertaken by
Culver, Gilbert and Trudel (2003) and Robson, Cripps and Steinberg (1996). Another
way to classify research methods in this field is to distinguish between descriptive,
correlational and experimental techniques (Passer and Smith, 2001). Let us now consider
each of these three categories briefly.
To begin with, the aim of descriptive research is to record and analyse certain aspects
of behaviour, especially in natural settings. Included in this category are such methods as
case studies (which are intensive or in-depth analyses of individuals, groups or events),
naturalistic observation (where researchers observe behaviour as it occurs in its own
natural environment), survey research (where information is collected about the
behaviour, experiences or attitudes of many people using a series of questions about the
topic of interest) and psychometric testing (where differences between people on some
psychological construct are assessed using specially designed, standardised instruments).
For a useful source of information on tests and measures in sport and exercise
psychology, see Duda (1998). Next, the purpose of correlational research is to measure
the relationship or degree of association between two or more variables. For example,
what is the relationship between athletes’ anxiety levels and their performance in athletic
competition? (see Chapter 3). Finally, the objective of experimental research is to
determine cause-and-effect relationships between two or more variables. Using this
method, a researcher tries to manipulate an independent variable under controlled
conditions in order to study its effects on a dependent variable. For example, what is the
Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 16