Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

relative efficacy of mental versus physical practice in the learning and performance of a
motor skill (see Chapter 5)?
As you have probably encountered these various categories of research methods
already in other academic courses (e.g., in your laboratory practicals and methodology
courses), I shall provide only a brief outline of their strengths and weaknesses here.
Therefore, in Box 1.4, I have summarised the main research methods used in sport and
exercise psychology along with appropriate sample studies drawn from different areas of
the field.

Sport and exercise psychology as a profession

In the previous section, we discussed sport and exercise psychology as an academic
discipline. Let us now let examine its status as a profession. In this regard, three
important questions need to be addressed. First, what exactly do sport psychologists do?
Second, what is the best model for the provision of sport psychology services to clients
such as athletes and coaches? Third, how can one qualify as a sport psychologist? Let us
now consider each of these questions in turn (but see also Lavallee, Kremer, Moran and
Williams, 2004, for a discussion of these issues).

What do sport psychologists do?

In an effort to address the issue of what sport psychologists do, the sport and exercise
section of the British Psychological Society organised a symposium designed to explore
the professional work and experiences of its members (Steinberg, Cockerill and Dewey,
1998). What emerged from this symposium was a fascinating spectrum of activities
which ranged from the provision of mental skills training schedules for athletes (e.g.,
footballers, runners and racing drivers) to the design and implementation of health
promotion programmes for non-athletic populations (e.g., to encourage people to engage
in more regular physical activity). More generally, the professional activities of sport and
exercise psychologists fall into three main categories: (n) applied consultancy work
(including advice on performance enhancement as well as the provision of counselling
and clinical psychology services); (ii) education; and (iii) research. Before we explore
these functions, however, two cautions should be noted. First, there is considerable
overlap between these three categories in practice (a point to which we shall return later
in this section). Second, the majority of sport psychologists work only part-time in this
field. Typically, the professional work from which they derive most of their income (i.e.,
their “day job”) lies in some other area of psychology or sport science such as lecturing
and research.

Box 1.4 Research methods in sport and exercise psychology

Method Goal Data obtainedAdvantages Limitations -Example

Experiments To study cause-

effect

relationships by

Quantitative-

usually interval

level of

i Random

assignment of

Ss

i May be

somewhat

artificial-not

MacMahon &

Masters (2002)

studied the

Introducing sport and exercise psychology: discipline and profession 17