Most cited Sport Psychology topics

Jonas Lindahl, Andreas Stenling, Magnus Lindwall, & Cristian Colliander (2014). Trends and Knowledge Base in Sport and Exercise Psychology Research: A Bibliometric Review Study. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

Bibliometric methods were used to examine: (I) research themes in sport and exercise psychology articles published between 2008 and 2011; and (II) the intellectual base of the field of sport and exercise psychology, defined as influential literature being cited in these articles. The dataset consisted of 795 articles from five sport and exercise psychology journals and 345 articles obtained through citation-based extension (N = 1140 articles).

Some main findings were: (a) the identification of many re-emerging themes, (b) research related to motivation seems to be extensive, (c) sport psychology and exercise psychology research share theoretical frameworks to some extent, however (d) differences compared to previous reviews indicate that sport psychology and exercise psychology may be regarded as 2 distinct research fields, rather than 1 united field, (e) isolated research areas were identified indicating potential for research integration.

As can be seen, the topics of motivation, performance, anxiety, and emotions continue to be the most investigated and cited topics.