Commentary on The 2012 World Congress on Performance Analysis in Sport Peter G O'Donoghue Sportscience 16, 38, 2012 (sportsci.org/2012/pod.htm) |
|
One
important issue in this conference report I would like to address is the traditional
nature of performance analysis of sport. Studies have typically been empirical
observational studies of actual sports performance rather than controlled
experiments. Indeed, when some experimental studies have been submitted to
the International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport, I as editor have asked authors
to justify use of an experimental designs rather than an analysis of actual
competition performance. This typically involves an author making the case
that the dependent variable of interest represents a critical part of the
sport which cannot be measured during actual competition. There was one such
paper recently on handball throwing speed. Even where conditions are
manipulated to examine the effectiveness of different forms of feedback
provided by performance analysis support, the studies are impossible to
completely control. I see performance analysis remaining as a discipline with
high ecological validity and low experimental control, although some
experimental studies are being done now–a welcome development, especially
when the setting is actual competitions. Having
chaired several poster sessions, I realized that some posters were clearly of
higher quality than some podium presentations. Unfortunately we can't always
get everything right when we allocate presentations to poster and podium
sessions on the basis of the submitted abstract. Published October 2012 |