Philosophy, qualitative methodology and sports coaching research: an unlikely trinity?

Abstract

This paper presents a critical account of the relation and unlikely trinity of philosophy, qualitative methodology and sports coaching research, in order to challenge assumptions about the nature of qualitative data analysis. Beginning from the premise that many popular research texts and handbooks tend to simplify research methodology as a somewhat benign and formulaic process, the paper encourages a more radical departure and critique from a philosophical-hermeneutic perspective. The key argument presented is that qualitative data analysis should have less to do with ‘method’ and more with philosophy, where ‘practical reasoning’ forges a dialectical relation between the intellectual and practical in the analytical process. This argument is illustrated with reference to published empirical work in the field of sports coaching research, and offers a series of provocations or conceptual ‘framings’ to guide analysis to counter more sterile, popular accounts of qualitative data analysis.

Keywords::

• philosophy
• methodology
• hermeneutics
• qualitative
• sports coaching

Notes

^1. Descartes could only be certain of anything because he could be certain of himself as a thinking subject. For Descartes, it is self-consciousness that guarantees knowledge: cogito, ergo sum; I think, therefore I am, thus invoking a separation of rational thought and empirical phenomena. This helps to explain why so many popular research texts appear to encourage a separation of the elements of the literature review, methodology and empirical findings, where the latter is conceived analogous to the metaphor of discovery, a world to be ‘found’ free of identity and subjectivity.

^2. Popper's critique of the logic of induction derives from Hume's earlier analysis. It suggests that if a significant number of swans are observed, and all these swans have particular characteristics X, Y and Z, including being coloured white, then the inductive inference that all swans displaying such characteristics will be white is an empirical fallacy. This is for three important reasons: what counts as ‘significant’?; how many observations need to be made to justify a conclusion that applies universally?; what happens if we are faced with a bird that displays the characteristics X, Y and Z, but is black?

^3. From an empiricist perspective, Hume's analysis of inductive inference suggests we are not justified in believing in any instance of induction, for its justification would require knowing that something is true. Of course, if we knew as much, this would merely represent a description of events rather than its inference and so the process of induction produces only a circular argument.