ABSTRACT
This chapter is intentionally entitled ‘research processes’ to make the point that there are many different ways of undertaking performance analysis research. There are common activities to all of these different processes such as the need to select a viable and worthwhile research question and explain fi ndings with reference to theory. However, there are also specifi c tasks associated with qualitative research, quantitative research and mixed methods that are discussed in this chapter. Some research processes in performance analysis follow a fi xed design with formal hypotheses to be tested. Other research processes permit much greater fl exibility to follow emerging lines of enquiry. This chapter will classify the main types of research processes in performance analysis of sport. The most common types of research used in performance analysis are descriptive retrospective research, case studies, quasi-experimental studies and observational analysis.
