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Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis in Sport Sciences and Physical Education

Introduction
A big issue among the researchers and scholars who have chosen to study Sports it was and still is what methodological approach to use for more accurate and valid results. A debate between those who believe that only quantitative analyses can reveal the truth about the world and those who seek to debunk the personal and every time unique understanding of the world through a qualitative analysis characterise the academic work in the field of sports. This struggle has led to the development of a gap between the two stances that is perpetuating and at the same time is creating issues for the validity and accuracy of the results.

Due to the fact that within the frame of “sports science” there is a vast interest between the scholars and researchers and an ampleness of research areas, the attempt to identify the proper methodology for gathering and analysing data is getting more difficult and complex. In the same time the interpretation of the data can be a confusing work for one to do concerning that sports is a dynamic part of the contemporary society and thus practices, activities, ideas and every aspect related to it should be treated under a sociological thought which is at the moment disregarded at some point by the researchers within sports studies.

In the sporting research field, it can be said that the dominant methodological stance is the positivist that accounts for the formal and standard experimentation that attempt to present a “universal” reality, an objective reality that accounts for every single person on the earth (David et al, 2005, p.6). This dominant position that positivism posses over the academic work has been pointed out by severe researchers who accuse that this as a threat for the quality of their work on the base that it can cause detach and a distance between the two approaches (Dubuis S., 1999). The researcher in this case have the ability to measure and explain certain phenomena without a subjective interpretation by being detached for every aspect that can affect him and therefore the understanding of the results. Under controlled data collection and the formation of a hypothesis, the process of testing and at the end the statistical analysis, the researcher will provide rules, norms, “realities” or “truths” that can be applied to a global level.

On the other hand, the one who does research within a qualitative frame and especially within the sports science ought to contextualised and located itself into the cultural and social conditions. That is, to place him or herself within the society and it’s political, economical and structure aspects. This researcher understand that a person is a creative human being and thus is not in a static relation with its environment but in the contrary this human being is incorporating in a dynamic way with the contemporary culture (David et al, 2005). In the same way, this approach is underpinned by sociological theories that attribute to sports practice, subcultures, institutions and events, a vast influence to the formation of the society (Atchinson, 2007, Rojek, 2005, Coakley, 2007, Maguire&Jarvie, 1994). The contextualisation of sports reveals its importance for the contemporary world by its influence to aspects like the formation of the identity, representations of class, power relations, and freedom, choice and self-determination issues. Those cultural variables give a completely different meaning to the interpretation of every information and data according to people as human beings.

But, why it is so important to consider sports as a field within the society, and why that should be an issue to the scholar who is studying this subject? Is there a need for qualitative assumptions and beliefs to work alongside or even within the positivism and not against it? This essay will try to outline the equal importance of those two methodological stances for sport studies and will attempt to debunk the pressure for a linkage between them and their incorporation for a more accurate and valid understanding of the sporting outcomes. It will also try to show within certain exemplars in the sporting research that the diversity of the subjects could reveal problematic functions of both quantitative and qualitative analyses and thus a mixing of the two might appear to be of use.

Contextualising Sports Studies
As mentioned previously, contextualising is the process which a phenomenon, an idea or a person –the researcher- is positioned within the culture and is analysed or explained always in a sociological frame, exposing conditions, beliefs, structures, ideas or functions by which society might develop influence on the particular subject.

According to a number of researchers within the sporting field (Hangreves, 1984 in David et al, 2005, Nelson C, 1994), sport practices, leisure or recreational sporting are always a reflection of society through their functions and representation and therefore it is needed to be placed under microscope within cultural studies terms. Doing contextual sport studies will help to provide more valid and understandable data about the creative, modern human being. But, in what way sport practice is a mirror of the contemporary society?

Aitchinson (2007) indicates that leisure and sport practice are greatly contributing to the formation of individual’s identity and at the same way sports are shaped by aspects of identities. She is making observations upon gender and sexuality matters within sport arenas and her theories are drawn upon the influential power of masculinity, femininity and the marginalisation of identities overshadows by lesbian’s, gay’s, disable’s or elder’s labels. All these functions are not born simultaneously; is the product of the socialisation process, the interaction with peers, family members, the institutions of school. In the same way the reproduction of class structure and aspects related with race are reflecting by sports (Coakley J., 2007).

Theories of representation are also evidence of the linkage between sport and society. Rojek (2005) observes that leisure as a practice bear ideas and beliefs of aspects of freedom, choice or self-determination. Representations of leisure through media are for example shaping our understanding of what is truth or "common sense", hence what we believe to be a healthy and nice looking body is based on the trends of fashion and the images produced by the media. Leisure is also a representation of important events in people’s life; wars, battles, religion events etc. Bourdeu (Jarvie & Maguire 1994), under the term of body habitus which is: different manners, customs and behaviours associated with each sport or leisure practice that are becoming in an unconscious level part of the person’s life and subsequently are reproduced into the society. People who occupied similar positions in the society, they express similar habitus which drive to certain lifestyles and through these functions people establish their identities and reproduce their social status.

Clearly sports under cultural examination can help the researcher to interpret in a better way the foundlings. By the following examples of research areas within sports this paper aim to show the growing need for a critical qualitative perspective in this academic field and also will attempt to make clear that the balance between qualitative and quantitative methodological tools has to be set by the type of the question that the researcher put together.

Leisure
Leisure as an academic field has established by a number of writers in the middle of the 20th century who the majority of them was coming from the social studies. While, leisure as a field of inquiries has been influenced by the "sociological imagination" in a great level, scholars and researchers who are currently associated with this subject have raised the demand of qualitative approach and are arguing that the nature of Leisure as a phenomenon which involves people who are acting always within a social and cultural frame, should be examined with the aid of methods underpinned by anthropological theories and thoughts. They are not rejecting the already expanded and dominant quantitative approach to leisure but, they are proposing the equal contribution of the qualitative stance.

Hultsman and Anderson debunk this domination of the positivistic paradigm upon the research into leisure and they argue that problems and difficulties are raised in the application of this paradigm to the specific field of inquiry (1991). In their article they expose these aspects which do not fit the appropriate use of research methods for conducting accurate and valid results that will help to interpret the right dimensions of this phenomenon. Some of the difficulties which are associated with the positivistic thought according to the authors are:

"...the gap between research efforts and theory development, the parsimonious nature of positivism, the assumptions about reality necessary for traditional inquiry...the reductionist nature of the paradigm...this approach attempts to reduce to simple referential relationship between linguistic terms and actual experiences..."

In a more recent article written by Sherry Dubuis (1999), the need for phenomenological and naturalistic approaches is also the main aspect of the discussion. She presents an increase of the qualitative methods within leisure over the last 6 years and a growth into the interest from scholars and researchers for this methodological stance as also the establishing belief that through these methods they can acquire valid data. While she reveal the importance of qualitative research she also argues that the influence of the positivistic paradigm on phenomenology have caused faulty functions of it in the field of inquiry. In her words:

"I argue, however, that the qualitative leisure researches working within an interpretivist paradigm should atop adhering to positivistic notions of science and adopt a way of social inquiry that is more in keeping with the ontological and epistemological worldviews that guide their work".

Furthermore she is drawing upon the scientific need for a researcher who is forced to keep him or herself detach from his or her work so the results would not be influenced by personal beliefs and ideas and she is arguing that such an objectivist view of the world might not be only difficult to achieved but it is also imaginary.

Sports Psychology
A number of researchers in this particular area of sports have indicated that there is a lack of diversity among the methods used and some of them are pointing out that very few are using qualitative methods (Stuart J.H. Biddle et al, 2001). In the same article the authors are exposing the unbalanced growing of the research by not taking into account philosophical stances on the research methods, the exclusion of non-positivist approaches and the persistence on psychometric assessments as the dominant tool of accurate data analyses and they propose that even if there are differences in comparing these two methods there is also many circumstances that request a combination of the two.

The above paper have successfully tried to stand critical against the use of varies methods and has contributed greatly to the understanding of the importance on qualitative approaches. It has exposed the faulty functions and at the same time the importance of a number of research tools. The multivariate statistics and multiple measures, the multivariate correlation analyses, discriminant analyses, structural equation modelling, meta-analysis and qualitative research methods like the semi-structured interview and content analysis have been carefully examined and then evaluated on the base of their suitability for the sports psychology and exercise studies. They have drawn especially upon the qualitative approaches by discussing on methods that are not popular among the researchers but are trustworthiness and they have tried to give some directions for the right implementation of them in the research. Doing so they concluded that the potential of the combination and the diversity of methods that can attribute the best efforts of a researcher.

In the same way Vikki Krane (2005) in one of her articles is describing the growing approval of qualitative approaches in this academic field and the need for greater diversity on the methods. The above article is focusing on the application of ethnography as a useful tool of research that can provide an inside to the examination of a certain group culture and can enhance the comprehension of the contemporary society. At the same time this paper is stressing out the fact that it is not very common for the researcher to outline in his work the theory that has underpinned his methodology and therefore the reader cannot fully comprehend the interpretation behind the findings. As the author indicates, this is an important issue if we consider that the researchers may implement similar methods but within different epistemological framework, in phenomenological approaches theory should always be an integrated part of the whole research work. Also the above paper proposes that quantitative methods like surveys and questionnaires might incorporate with ethnography for a more accurate and valid analyses.

Sports Medicine
Sport medicine and relative subjects to this particular area of interest are also deploying methods of inquiry under phenomenological thought. This essay will present two examples that will illustrate that this is another case of a steadily increase on the need for a more anthropological view.

The first study is concerned with the placebo effect in sport performance; the important about this paper is that it reveals that whilst a number of studies have tried to analyse this phenomenon in sports, only one have used qualitative strategies (Beedie C., 2007). These papers implemented quantitative methods and presented data covering all the biological and physiological aspects of the placebo effect but they failed to address the psychological conditions of it. Considering that placebo effect can be measured and analysed in the laboratories and by not taking into account factors like stress, beliefs, confidence, competition anxiety, perceived pain or motivation at the moment of action, under real conditions, gives to the results an one-dimensional prospect. The author proposes that a combination of the research in laboratories with qualitative techniques in the field can reveal the right dimension of this phenomenon.

The second paper (Greenfield B. et al, 2007) studies the use of qualitative research techniques in orthopaedic and physical therapy. For one more time the research for gathering information in order to provide a more efficient health care is dominated by quantitative strategies. As this paper observes:

"...physical therapy is a relational practice, and invariably relationships are established within the context of the patients and therapist’s values, emotions and perspectives...Post-positivist research (as qualitative methods) in physical therapy seek to understand how human and social interactions may influence treatment outcome... The exigencies of clinical practice and the unpredictability of human nature justify the use of post-posivistic approaches to research".

Going further it examining the applications of these research approaches into this specific area, it also discusses the validity of such methods and the limitations associated with them and acknowledge the importance for the researcher to consider the nature of his or her research question so that he or she can implement the right technique for gathering and analysing data.

Training and Coaching
Continuing on to how qualitative approaches are gaining popularity among the researchers and constitute trustworthiness methods, this paper will present a number of articles that address this phenomenon within sports studies and especially within the part of the sporting arena which consider to be linked directly with the subculture in sports, the sector that involves the human being as the main domain, the training and coaching field.

In a recent article the authors presented a study which had based on qualitative research tools and had to examine and analyse how the interpretation of competitive anxiety by the athletes and more specific elite athletes, was in any way affecting their performance. Drawing on a number of previous studies that have associated with similar subjects, such as the influence of beliefs, self-confidence, perceived control on the performance, the above article shows that the funding supports the research and the funding by quantitative approaches on this issue (Handon S. et al, 2007). This research incorporating with others supported by the positivistic paradigm, underlines the importance of the combination of both methodologies for a more accurate interpretation of the studied phenomena.

A second article covers the same area: the qualitative inquiry within training, and discusses the beneficial influence on this research area, the characteristics of this type of approach, presents methods for gathering and analysing data, and lastly it addresses the possible directions of the phenomenological thought within athletic training. Characteristics that make reasonable why qualitative research fit into the sporting arena are described by the author such as:

"...do not attempt to control variables, manipulate procedures, create research or comparison groups, or isolate a particular phenomenon...take a holistic perspective to inquiry...answering questions to processes, site-phenomena, contexts, programmes or situations in which little is already known...is flexible and dynamic...is inductive, the researcher begins with specific data and moves toward building general patterns...allows various dimensions to unfold or emerge...qualitative inquiry is interpretive" (Pitney W., Parker J., 2001).

In the same way studies and articles in the sector of training and coaching demonstrate the combine use of both quantitative and qualitative methods and the increase in the popularity of the diversity into strategies and techniques (Hume P. et al, 2005, McGillivray D. & Mclntosh A, 2006)).

Physical Education
Writings and studies upon physical education have proved to be insufficient and the data of the research do not help to understand the real nature under which has been taken. A quite representative exemplar of the above is the research on matters that have been associated with gender. Paul Willis (1993), have pointed directly to the right spot with his comments on the examination of women’s performance within sports and physical education (In David et al, 2005). He argued that statements who refer to women’s ability by comparing to men’s, for example: women can achieve only 90 per cent of a man’s strength might lead to controversial conclusions if it is only the product of research based on quantitative techniques. By t hat Willis is underlying that the result presented here and probably applied in generalised norms about women will not aid to the understanding of the importance of sociological factors on the reasons why women performed in this way. In his words:

"...cannot help us understand, comprehend, explain or change the massive feeling in our society that a woman has no business flexing her muscles anyway" (Willis, 1993:33 in David et al, 2005).

It is again obviously that if both paradigms incorporate the field of inquiry will be benefited. As a second example in this direction within sports, a paper that presents a research work that implements both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the how youth sports in Flanders and Netherlands could be reinforced. Matters like the behaviour of youngsters addressed as of great importance in the procedure of building a system of a national institution which will provide young people with physical activities. The authors argue that it is important that a nation uses quantitative measurements to identify financial factors for the constructing of this body but, it is equally important to take into account sociological elements which will be analysed by qualitative techniques. So the study goes on to identify the criteria needed to be examine under the positivist thought and the criteria needed to be analysed in a phenomenological concept and develop two research questions for each one methodological stance ( Knop P., Martelaer K, 2001). Of course the combination of the above methodologies might causes into limitations due to the fact that these two approaches are essentially different.

Conclusions
This paper aimed to demonstrate the unbalanced use of research methods in the sporting field. By presenting a number of articles and studies within some of the areas of interest and by illustrating with each one the lack of established work by qualitative researchers or researchers who are using both approaches (Quasi-experimental approach, this paper tried to highlight the importance of a combination of both methodologies.

The majority of the above articles are drawing upon the steadily increase of the need for a movement towards an anthropological and phenomenological approach to sport research. None of these papers rejects the positivistic paradigm or tries to contemn its applications in this academic subject. As none of these articles regards qualitative the only approach that fit the research in sports. All of them are underlying the reasons for this combination, the opportunities, and the benefits but also the limitations connected to future directions underpinned by both positivistic and phenomenological concepts.

Lastly, a crucial point to stand is the pressure for each research or scholar to take a critical position against the debate “qualitative or quantitative methods?”, and raise the evaluation of criteria that fit to the specific research question as a very important step to the further success of his or her work. Certain question to be fully answered and comprehended needs certain research tools and methods. These methods require placing under the microscope for the best research practice.

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