ABSTRACT
Sometimes when studying sport and exercise, researchers deal with multiple variables some of which may be related. This may happen in sports psychology and sports management where questionnaires contain numerous individual questions. There are other areas such as sports performance where multiple aspects of performance are represented by the set of variables used. Analysing these variables can lead to a cumbersome results section of a paper or thesis due to the volume of variables involved in the study. Factor analysis and principal components analysis are data reduction techniques that identify related variables and produce a smaller set of broad factors or components to represent different dimensions in the data. These factors or components can then be analysed leading to a more concise expression of the findings of a study. In this chapter, the use of principal components analysis for data reduction is covered. Those specifically interested in factor analysis are referred to other texts ( Manly, 2005: 91–104; Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007: 607–75; Vincent, 2005: 234–6).
