SPORT & EXERCISE

Sport & Exercise Science Assessment



Sport & Exercise Science Assessment

Demography of data

The application of research into practice is paramount to coaches. In her keynote address at the Cutting Edge Developments in Sports Science Conference, Campbell4 argued that there was a commonly held belief by sports scientists that “coaches do not know what questions to ask the sports scientists”, and conversely, coaches believe that “ sports scientists keep answering questions that no one is asking”. Various methods have been used to identify sports science research needs. In the early 1990s, the British Association of Sports Sciences (now known as the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences) formed three panels of experts to review literature in the disciplines of physiology,5 biomechanics6 and psychology,7 with each panel assessing areas requiring further research.

Around the same time, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) conducted bi-annual surveys of sports stakeholders (coaching directors, sports administrators and sports scientists) to determine sports research needs.

Research needs differ according to the type of stakeholder. Coaching directors and sports administrators are engaged with coaching development at all levels. An elite coach is concerned primarily with sports performance, whereas a sports science researcher is focused on increasing sports science knowledge (both applied and theoretical), based on sound research questions.

At the various institutes of sport in Australia (total of nine), the sports science researchers are essentially the service providers to the coaches of elite sports programs, and so the interaction between these two groups ought to be one of interdependency. Research at an institute of sport tends to be linked more closely to the needs of coaches than do research projects undertaken by universities, and the relationship between coaches and sports scientists may influence the way that research is conducted. However, in both settings, research tends to be theoretical in nature because researchers at institutes of sport have strong links with universities and PhD and masters students operation at institutes of sport. It is acknowledged that research conducted by academics is usually published in journals and therefore is outside the scope of this study.

In general, sports science researchers work in controlled environments. Laboratory settings allow the researcher to control most variables, but the laboratory setting may not necessarily represent the sporting task as it would be performed in the field. In laboratory settings, there is a need for tests and equipment that more accurately mimic the sporting actions and demands, and the challenge for researchers is to conduct more research in more practical settings. It has been argued8 that the extent to which coaches are influenced by and value sports science research “depends on the willingness of the coach to embrace research findings determined under conditions where sports performance has been artificially manipulated”.

Researchers require adequate time to plan and carry out rigorous research,9 but coaches generally need solutions to problems of an immediate nature, as “coaches often want to solve a hundred problems at once, and often cannot clearly define the problem in scientific ...