Scheduled for Sport Management/Measurement/Sociocultural Aspects of Physical Activity Posters, Friday, April 12, 2002, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM, San Diego Convention Center: Exhibit Hall


A Content Analysis of The Journal of Sport Management: An Examination of Sport Management's Premier Body of Knowledge

Jongmi Joo and E. Newton Jackson, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL

The field of sport management has grown beyond merely field and athletic event preparation for contests to a scholarly discipline. This emerging scholarly field of study has been lead by the Journal of Sport Management since 1987. Leading scholars of sport management have demanded our body of literature be examined and assessed (Pitts, 2000). Midway during the previous decade Slack (1996) discussed the progress made by this journal and gave suggestions on content areas, which needed more investigation.The purpose of this study was to investigate the body of knowledge published in the Journal of Sport Management (JSM). This study involved a descriptive analysis of all written materials in JSM, including articles and book reviews. Content analysis methodology was conducted reviewing each volume and issue from its inception in 1987 through July 2001, (n=43). The ten NASPE-NASSM Sport Management core content areas (NASPE-NASSM Joint Task Force, 1993) were designated as the categories to place each published manuscript. The 242 published articles were written by 113 single authors, while on 88 articles two authors collaborated, 32 different articles were written by a trio of authors, and only 9 papers had more than 3 authors collaborating. The data revealed that JSM has published 264 male authors while only 158 female authors. The authors were not listed according to academic rank. Slack (1996) examined JSM (n=20) identifying 65% of the published articles dealt with the delivery of physical education or athletic programs. In this current study, distinct differences were found compared to Slack. The trend of sport management research appeared to print primarily in the sport marketing core content area for much of the 1990s until a noticeable switch occurred. The area of organizational behavior and theory came to dominate the journal in the new millennium. This new direction and finding proved sport management research being published in a highly different direction from the early years and previous research of JSM. The published core content areas of facility management and that of legal issues revealed an extremely small number of studies. A strong rationale stands that these core content areas have numerous other journals to publish within. The findings of this research concur and support numerous scholars of sport management including Slack, Paton, Pitts, and Parks concerning the discipline's state of published and academic literature.
Keyword(s): sport management

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