ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that sport management research involves systematic
exploration, guided by well constructed questions, producing new informa-
tion or reassessing old information. Sport management researchers spend
a great deal of time evaluating other people’s research, deciding what the
strengths and weaknesses are in each case, and hoping to apply their
conclusions to their own reading and to the procedures they follow in their
research. In this chapter, we recognize that sport management researchers’
own value systems inevitably come into play. We also argue that sport
management researchers therefore need to look carefully at the claims of
others, judging for themselves whether they are convincing. To do that, they
need to understand the process by which other researchers have come to their
conclusions, and this means understanding both their methodologies and
the intellectual frameworks within which they have operated.
