Applied Coaching Research Journal Research Journal 1 | Page 51

APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018, Vol. 1
I think the nice way of looking at
research, policy and practice is just
because one person is right does not
mean the other person is wrong. If
you consider a problem, say injuries
in sport, and you invite people from a
governing body, sports teams and an
academic institution, they all look at it
from a different perspective. The club
is interested in reducing the injuries to
increase performance, and the governing
body has a duty of care to preserve
the welfare of the players, and make
sport safer. The academic wants to fully
understand the problem; they want
to develop something that is robust,
that contributes to not only answering
the problem but also that is different
and contributes to knowledge. This is
a challenge as professional clubs care
What is the
role of research
within sport,
and specifically
coaching?
And how does
it influence
practice? In its general sense, it is to understand
the sport better, to allow people who
are in key influential roles to make
better informed decisions. If we look
at why they would do that, it would
relate back to participation within sport,
the development of athletes through
the sport, and performance at the top
level. Each of those has an element
of science in terms of understanding
injury risk, participation rates and
performance. It is also important to
consider that sport is an emotive
industry; our job is to make as many
things objective as we can which
allows the coach to make subjective
decisions based on the knowledge
and experience that they have.
People have been talking about bridging
the gap between research and practice
for 20 years, and are still talking about
it now. Think of the efficacy of a study
versus the effectiveness. Research can
contribute to practice in two ways: by
increasing the knowledge that people
have who are working in the sport, which
comes from efficacy; and increasing the
application of research within sport,
which is the effectiveness.
about the what (is the risk), rather
than perhaps the why. We have some
four-year projects at the moment with
national governing bodies. The people
in clubs find that frustrating because
they might not be in that club in four
years’ time. But as researchers we are
not confident that we can collect that
data in a year and make meaningful
conclusions. The way research has
evolved is that not a lot of academic
researchers also appreciate and
consider the real world challenges, in
addition to the academic component
of research. This has resulted in some
great applied collaborative research
projects, so the problems that are in
the real world are being fed back into
institutions and we can do research to
answer those.
Are there any
challenges/
opportunities?
51