"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

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.

Michael Atkinson is Associate Professor, Faculty of Physical Education and Health, University of Toronto. He was previously Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Loughborough University, leading the instruction of research methods and skills at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels therein. Michael received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Calgary in 2001 (BA, University of Waterloo, 1995; MA, McMaster University, 1997). Since then, he has researched and taught courses on the sociology of sport, bodies, deviance and research methods (qualitative, quantitative and historical) at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada), McMaster University (Canada), and University of Western Ontario (Canada). For his contributions to the Canadian social sciences, Michael was recipient of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canadäs prestigious Aurora Award in 2004.

Academic Journals
Analytic Epidemiology
Applied versus Pure Research
Archival Research
Causality
Critical Theory
Descriptive Statistics
Discourse Analysis
Distributions
Epistemology
Ethnography
Evaluation Research
Evidence-Based Research and Practice
Experiments
Grounded Theory
Hypotheses
Inferential Statistics
Interdisciplinary Research
Interpretivism
Interviewing
Literature Reviews
Media Analysis
Meta-Analysis
Ontology
Populations and Samples
Positivism
Quantitative versus Qualitative Research
Questionnaires
Reliability
Representation
Research Ethics
Research Proposals
Research Questions
Theory
Translation
Triangulation
Unobtrusive Methods
Validity
Variables
Visual Methods