Key Concepts in Sport and Exercise Research Methods

by Michael Atkinson

"What a helpful book! This will be a 'friend ' to many undergraduate students looking for clarification."

- Helen Hazelwood, St Mary's University College

"This is a great book that really helps the students understand research and the complex processes that can often daunt even the most intelligent students."

- Phil Barter, Middlesex University

"Few can bring research methods to life like Mike Atkinson. His breadth of research interests and experience mean he can introduce you to all you need to know and inspire you to get down to doing some research yourself."

- Dominic Malcolm , Loughborough University

This book systematically demonstrates the significance and application of research methods in plain language. Written for students, it contains the core methodological concepts, practices and debates they need to understand and apply research methods within the field of sport and exercise. It provides a comprehensive panoramic introduction which will reassure and empower students.

Written by a leading academic and drawing on years of teaching experience, it includes carefully cross-referenced entries which critically engage with interdisciplinary themes and data. Each concept includes:

clear definitions
suggestions for further reading
comprehensive examples
practical applications

Pragmatic, lucid and concise the book will provide essential support to students in sports studies, sport development, sport and exercise science, kinesiology and health.

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2011

About the author

A son of Long Island and a father of three, I love very good beer, shellfish of any sort, Italian opera in the summertime, and movies. I own more books than I do any other one thing. I love writing, though, making sentences. In addition to my books, I've written, and still write, film criticism, cultural attack, book reviews and essays for The Village Voice, The Believer, Sight & Sound, The Guardian (U.K.), In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, SPiN, Film Comment, Modern Painters, Moving Image Source, IFC.com, The Forward, Maxim, The Progressive, The American Prospect, The Poetry Foundation, The Criterion Collection, Turner Classic Movies (tcm.com), The L Magazine, LA Weekly, and elsewhere.

I have also written a certain amount of unproduced TV, and one pilot that was in fact shot and then vanquished, despite extraordinary notoriety,
BABYLON FIELDS, which can be easily Googled.

My first novel, set in 1956 Key West and ending up in the Cuban mountains with Che and Fidel, HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS is the first of a projected series, gallivanting around in the most famous literary biography of the 20th century with a nod to history but also a robust jones for truth, irony, cocktails and culprits.

The second volume, HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT, finds Hemingway investigating the very real murder of Jose Robles in 1937 Spain.

For #3... methinks Paris.

Not incidentally, at least not to me, I'm also a widely published poet, the winner of Word Works' Washington Prize in 2001, a runner-up for the National Poetry Series in 2001 and 1998, a selectee for The Best American Poetry 1993 (eds. Louise Gluck & David Lehman, Collier/Macmillan, 1993), a recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, 1988-89, etc. My poems have been in Epoch, Crazyhorse, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Ontario Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, The Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Chelsea, Chicago Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Seattle Review, Graham House Review, New Orleans Review, Kansas Quarterly, Mudfish, Willow Springs, Massachusetts Review, and many other journals.

Lastly, I find pride in the fact that my children can find Timbuktu on a map, I vote anti-imperialist whenever it is possible to do so, and I believe deeply in the existence of human stupidity.