Doing Real World Research in Sports Studies
Edited by Andy Smith, Ivan Waddington
Routledge – 2014 – 256 pages
Traditional research methods textbooks tend to present an idealized and simplistic picture of the research process. This ground-breaking text however, features leading international sport researchers explaining how they actually carried out their real life research projects, highlighting the practical day-to-day problems, false starts and setbacks that are a normal part of the research process.
This book focuses on ten pieces of research that have made a distinctive and valuable contribution to the study of sport. For each one the author of that research explains how the project was conducted and the issues that they faced. In addition, each piece of research has a commentary from a leading sport scholar outlining why it is regarded as being an important contribution to the discipline of sport studies and how that research can inform studies being carried out today.
Contributors to the book describe how in their own real life research projects, they
Doing Real World Research in Sport Studies enables students and researchers to develop a more realistic understanding of what the research process actually involves. It charts the development of key research projects in sport and should be essential reading for any sport research methods course.
Introduction - Real Life Research: The Inside Story - Ivan Waddington and Andy Smith Chapter 1. Researching the World of Professional Football - Ivan Waddington Commentary - Sports Medicine Goes Under the Knife - Dominic Malcolm Chapter 2. Darwin’s Athletes: A Retrospective After Fifteen Years - John Hoberman Commentary - Racism, Sports Research and Political Failure - Grant Jarvie Chapter 3. Habitus as Topic and Tool: Reflections on Becoming a Prizefighter - Loïc Wacquant Commentary - ‘Three Funerals, Two Weddings, Four Births and a Baptism’: On the Importance of Embodying Sociology - Chris Shilling Chapter 4. Mischief Managed: Ticket Scalping, Research Ethics and Involved Detachment - Michael Atkinson Commentary - The Ups and Downs of Hanging Out with Ticket Scalpers: Reflections on Doing Ethnographic Research - Kath Woodward Chapter 5. Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk: Reflections on an Ethnographic Study - Lee F. Monaghan Commentary - Raising the Bar in Bodybuilding Research: A Commentary on Bodybuilding, Drugs and Risk By Lee F. Monaghan - Martin Roderick Chapter 6. Home and Away Revisited – Warts and All - Scott Fleming Commentary - A Reflection on the Impact of Home and Away - Karl Spracklen Chapter 7. Methodological Issues in Researching Physical Activity in Later Life - Elizabeth C. J. Pike Commentary - Ageing, Embodiment and Physical Activity: Some Key Methodological Issues - Sharon Wray Chapter 8. Researching Inner-City Sport: Who Plays, And What Are The Benefits? - Ken Roberts Commentary - Roberts’ and Brodie’s Inner-City Sport: An Undiscovered Gem? - Ken Green Chapter 9. Researching Sport-for-Development: The Need for Scepticism - Fred Coalter Commentary - Sport-for-Development: The Work of Fred Coalter - Cora Burnett Chapter 10. Researching Policy Change in School Sport and Physical Education - Barrie Houlihan Commentary - Yes, Minister: Insights from Research on the Politics of Policy Change in Physical Education and School Sport - Andy Smith
Andy Smith is Professor of Sport and Physical Activity and Associate Head of the Department of Sport and Physical Activity at Edge Hill university, where he is also Director of the Social Science of Sport Research Group. He is Co-Editor of the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics.
Ivan Waddington is a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, and the University of Chester. He is a recognised expert on drug use in sport and is the author of Sport, Health and Drugs and co-author of An Introduction to Drugs in Sport (with Andy Smith).