ABSTRACT

Research Methods in Sports Coaching is a key resource for any student, researcher or practitioner wishing to undertake research into sports coaching. It takes the reader through each phase of the research process, from identifying valuable research questions, to data collection and analyses, to the presentation and dissemination of research findings. It is the only book to focus on the particular challenges and techniques of sports coaching research, with each chapter including examples, cases and scenarios from the real world of sports coaching.

The book introduces and explores important philosophical, theoretical and practical considerations in conducting coaching research, including contextual discussions about why it’s important to do sports coaching research, how to judge the quality of coaching research, and how sports coaching research might meet the needs of coaching practitioners. Written by a team of leading international scholars and researchers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia, and bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book is an essential course text for any research methods course taken as part of a degree programme in sports coaching or coach education.

chapter 1|5 pages

Introduction

part I|45 pages

Philosophical considerations

chapter 3|13 pages

Logical positivism

chapter 4|11 pages

Interpretivism

chapter 5|10 pages

Poststructuralism

part II|56 pages

Preparing and initiating the research process

chapter 7|10 pages

Reviewing the literature

chapter 8|10 pages

The place of theory

chapter 10|11 pages

Ethical considerations

part III|49 pages

Quantitative approaches to coaching research

chapter 11|12 pages

Questionnaires

chapter 12|9 pages

Systematic observation

chapter 14|11 pages

Judging quantitative research

part IV|43 pages

Qualitative approaches to coaching research

chapter 15|10 pages

Interviews

chapter 16|10 pages

Ethnography

chapter 17|11 pages

Analysis of qualitative data

part V|36 pages

Contemporary approaches to coaching research

chapter 19|12 pages

Autoethnography

chapter 20|10 pages

Discourse analysis

part VI|22 pages

Disseminating coaching research