Bibliometrisk kartläggning av det idrottspsykologiska fältet

Sammanfattning: Objectives: The aim in this thesis has been to generate information relevant for strategic positioning and future evaluations within the scientific field of sport and exercise psychology. This has been done by request, and in collaboration with The Group of Sport and Exercise Psychology at the Institution of Psychology at the University of Umeå. Research questions:  (1) How does the cognitive structure within the field of sport and exercise psychology take shape with respect to research topics in current sport-psychological research, i.e. the research front? (2) How does the social structure within the field of sport and exercise psychology take shape with respect to formal scientific collaboration? Data: 879 articles published between 2008-2011 were used in this study. The population of articles were collected from a set of 5 core journals: International Journal of Sport Psychology, Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Sport Psychologist, Psychology of Sport and Exercise. The original set was expanded by collecting relevant sport psychology articles from Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports and Journal of Sports Sciences. Methods: (1) The bibliometric indicator normalized bibliographic coupling combined with hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis was used for mapping the research front. With this approach articles are basically clustered with respect to shared refererences, which in this context is understood as a measure of topical similarity. (2)  For the mapping of social structures a collaboration analysis was performed by extracting and visualizing social networks based on the bibliometric indicator coauthorship.     Results: (1) Identification and classification of 80 clusters based on topical similarity in collaboration with a subject expert. (2) Providing a map of formal scientific collaborations between countries based on coauthorship. (3) Providing a map of social networks based on coauthorships between individual researchers. (4) Identification and contextualization of central researchers based on production within the visualized coauthor network. The publications of each researcher were traced to corresponding clusters in the research front to gain information about in which subject areas and topics these central researchers publish. (5) Identification of research groups with high coauthor values, i.e. high intensity in their formal collaboration. Furthermore the publications from these groups were connected to corresponding clusters, i.e. giving information about in which subject areas and topics these groups publish.