Research Methods in Sports Coaching

Research Methods in Sports Coaching is a key resource for students and scholars who are completing research into sports coaching. The book comprises five distinct parts that prompt readers to think about important considerations:

1. preparing and initiating the coaching research process
2. philosophical considerations for coaching research
3. coaching research designs
4. methods of collecting coaching data
5. analysing coaching data

This fully revised edition places particular emphasis on introducing the diverse research paradigms, research designs, as well as methods of data collection and analysis available to coaching researchers.

Written by a team of leading international scholars and researchers from the UK, Sweden, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, this book bridges the gap between the theory and practice of sports coaching research. The second edition of Research Methods in Sports Coaching is an essential text for any research methods course taken as part of a degree programme in sports coaching or coach education.

Lee Nelson is a Reader in sports coaching in the Department of Sport and Physical Activity at Edge Hill University, UK. He leads the department’s Practice in Coaching and Teaching Research Group. His research focuses on developing a critical social analysis of sports work in community and performance coaching as well as professional education contexts. He principally utilises qualitative research methods as well as dramaturgical and interactionist theoretical frameworks to understand how sports workers experience and navigate organisational life.

Ryan Groom is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Exercise Sciences at the University of Derby, UK. His work is based at the intersection of interactional sociology and psychology, predominately working within interpretive applied naturalistic and ethnographic frameworks within elite sport. He has published widely in journals examining video-based feedback, organisational change, mentoring, and learning. He has also co-edited Research Methods in Sports Coaching (2014, Routledge) and Learning in Sports Coaching (2016, Routledge).

Paul Potrac is a Professor of sports coaching in the Department of Sport, Exercise Rehabilitation at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK. He combines qualitative research methods and dramaturgical and symbolic interactionist theorising to critically examine the interactive, relational, and emotional dimensions of group life in high-performance and community sport contexts. He holds visiting professor positions at University College Dublin and Cardiff Metropolitan University.