Mixed Methods in Emerging Academic Subdisciplines: The Case of Sport Management

Abstract

This article examines the prevalence and characteristics of mixed methods research in the relatively new subdiscipline of sport management. A mixed methods study is undertaken to evaluate the epistemological/philosophical, methodological, and technical levels of mixed methods design in sport management research. The results indicate that mixed methods research is still rarely used, poorly legitimized and often weakly designed in this field. Our conclusions lead to the hypotheses that the more central a research field is, the higher the prevalence of mixed methods, and that mixed methods only slowly trickle down from central to more peripheral subdisciplines. Implications of the research findings for both mixed methods scholars and sport management researchers are discussed, and directions for future research are proposed.