Literature reviews in sport psychology

Sport Psychology research has developed and expanded considerably over the last decade or two.

Its accelerating volume of research output embraces a wide variety of topics having both academic and practical impact, and relating to other areas of Sports Science and also the broader overall discipline of mainstream psychology.

In this busy and developing arena, the healthy and productive evolution of a research topic requires the periodic summarisation, reflection, and feedback that is the domain of the literature review.

A review acts as the primary catalyst for a topics emerging organisation, reorganisation and structure, and generates perspectives and pointers for further study directions; it establishes reference points and foundations for continued progress.

By its very nature it tends to be a larger publication than a typical focused research paper.

The pathways to publication of Sport Psychology research are often severely congested. For example, in 2004, four of the main refereed outlets for original research in Sport Psychology: The Sport Psychologist, the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, and the Psychology of Sport and Exercise received over 400 submissions (private communications).

Inevitably the space that established journals can afford to grant to review articles is limited, both in terms of the article size and the frequency with which topics can be visited.

Although reviews that appear in books usually enjoy a larger and more appropriate space allocation, they typically have not carried the hallmark of external independent peer review that journal publication provides.

This collection presents a number of contemporary reviews of significant and popular topics from some prominent researchers within each area.

An important and distinctive feature of this volume is that all the chapters have been subjected to peer-review by expert referees, a process usually reserved solely for journal publications.

This book offers up-to-date literature reviews with a distinctive conceptual, theoretical, and practical focus.