Scheduled for Research Consortium Free Communication: Higher Education Issues in Sports Administration and Management, Friday, March 16, 2007, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM, Convention Center: 328


Examining the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport: A Content Analysis of Topical Journal Articles

Brian. S. Gordon, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL and Taeho Yoh, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL

Due to the significant increase of sport-related litigations, the field of sport law has tremendously grown and widened its scope over the past 20 years (Young, 2001). In congruence with this growth, many professional journals were created to examine issues within the field of sport law. Among the academic journals in the field of sport law, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport is the premier journal of its kind, presenting perspectives on legal issues in sports law, management, business, recreation, and physical education fields (Anderson, 2001). The main strength of the journal is its unique perspective and flexibility in that it is the only sport law journal that examines how legal issues affect sports, recreation, and physical education and draws on a diverse authorship for its works (Anderson, 2001). Although it is crucial for sport managers and academia to get a sense of what direction the sport industry is heading, a content analysis of a sport law journal has not been conducted in the past. The purpose of this study was to examine the research endeavors contained in a prominent sport law journal, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport. Through this critical examination of published works, past, present, and future trends in publication have been identified. The units of analysis for this study were 116 articles from 1995-2004 published in the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport. The data was categorized into 21 different content areas and a trend analysis was conducted to determine which topics have been given recent publication consideration as well as the topics that have lacked recent consideration. The topical analysis revealed that gender equity (12.9%), risk management (12.1%), negligence (9.5%), sport law education (7.8%), and NCAA & student-athletes (7.8%) were the most frequently published topics. Additionally, the trend analysis revealed that the areas of sport law education, negligence, NCAA & student-athletes, and gambling were topics that have increased significantly in overall publications in the past five years. Although gender equity and risk management articles constitute a significant portion of the journal, they showed the most significant decrease in the past five years.
Keyword(s): legal issues

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