ABSTRACT
In elite sport, the advantages demonstrated by expert performers over novices are sometimes due in part to their superior physical fitness or to their greater technical precision in executing specialist motor skills. However, at the very highest levels, all competitors typically share extraordinary physical capacities and have supremely well-honed techniques. Among the extra factors, which can differentiate between the best performers, psychological skills are paramount. These range from the capacities to cope under pressure and bounce back from setbacks to knowledge of themselves, opponents, and the domain, which experts access and apply in performance. In the companion chapter on breadth and depth of knowledge in expert sport (see Chapter 9), we discussed the forms or kinds of knowledge deployed by elite athletes, and described some lines of research that seek to tap and study such expert knowledge (McPherson & MacMahon, 2008; McRobert et al., 2011). In this chapter we focus more directly on questions about methods for measuring or more accurately assessing expert knowledge, in particular addressing a wider range of methods to help us understand what experts know. Suggesting that sport researchers can productively adopt and adapt existing qualitative methodologies for integration with more standard quantitative methods, we introduce and survey a number of areas of qualitative research in psychology.
