Toward a more critical dialogue for enhancing self-report surveys in sport expertise and deliberate practice research

Abstract

Two hallmark criteria are commonly used to determine whether a variable of interest has an impact on sport expertise development: (a) discrimination of performance or skill levels and (b) association with time spent in deliberate practice activities. Our opinion is that there has been warranted criticism of the deliberate practice framework and greater methodological rigour will invigorate survey research in this area. In this paper, we aimed to provide critical perspectives on self-report methods previously used to assess group discrimination and to measure deliberate practice in survey-based work in the context of sport expertise as well as to illustrate steps that could be taken to improve confidence in the validity and reliability of these measures. First, we focus on challenges discriminating between multiple, progressively skilled groups of athletes and outline two strategies: one aimed at improving the validity of skill grouping using standardized performance measures, and another illustrating how researchers can assess variability within skill levels. Second, we highlight challenges in measuring deliberate practice activities and propose a funnel method of narrowing athletes’ estimates from general sport activity to highly individualized, purposeful practice. We argue more attention is needed on the development of self-report methods and measurements to reliably and validly assess sport expertise development.