Qualitative research in six sport and exercise psychology journals between 2010 and 2017: An updated and expanded review of trends and interpretations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Descriptive reviews of qualitative research across two decades – 1990–1999 (Culver, D., Gilbert, W., & Trudel, P. (2003). A decade of qualitative research published in sport psychology journals: 1990–1999. The Sport Psychologist, 17, 1–15) and 2000–2009 (Culver, D., Gilbert, W., & Sparkes, A. C. (2012). Qualitative research in sport psychology journals: The next decade 2000–2009 and beyond. The Sport Psychologist, 26, 261–281) – outlined qualitative research trends in three North American sport psychology journals (The Sport Psychologist, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology and Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology). The present study updates a descriptive review of qualitative research in these three previously reviewed journals plus three additional sport and exercise psychology journals (Psychology of Sport and Exercise, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, and Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology), to explore key trends between 2010 and 2017. Of the 1,914 studies, 351 (18%) were qualitative. Findings comprised four sections: distribution of articles, qualitative methods, rigour/trustworthiness and epistemology. Trends included an increased percentage of qualitative articles in 2015–2017 compared to 2010–2012, reliance on methods of individual interviews (85%), inter-rater reliability (45%) and member checking (41%) as primary rigour indicators, and 61% of studies not declaring an epistemology. Key trends are discussed in relation to contemporary qualitative research dialogues within, and outside of, sport psychology. We conclude that consideration of additional qualitative research methods, contemporary forms of rigour, and epistemological awareness and coherence, are useful goals. Recommendations align with calls for “connoisseurship”, whereby a diversity of qualitative approaches is appreciated, with the ability to make informed fine-grained discrimination among qualities concerning qualitative inquiry. These suggestions hold potential for expanding ways of knowing, conducting and judging qualitative sport psychology research within these six journals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.071 | 0.165 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.039 | 0.043 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".