Physical activity and sports science in Italian scientific research products

Purpose. This study aims to measure the number of scientific production of Italian researchers, as framed on academic disciplines of Physical training and methodology (code M-EDF/01) and Sports science and methodology (code M-EDF/02), afferents to the academic recruitment field of Exercise and sports science (code 06/N2) and Didactics, special education and educational research (code 11/D2). Material and Methods. The sample consisted of the entire population of full professors (n=30) belonging to the two academic disciplines of Physical training and methodology and Sports science and methodology, plus a proportional representation of the two academic recruitment fields with at least one associate professor per university, for a total of 124 researchers. The titles of the first ten scientific products in terms of more citations from the Google Scholar database were analysed for each researcher. The full consistency of the title with the scientific statement of the two academic disciplines was assessed, identifying the number of articles afferent to sports and physical activity, biomedical and Psycho-pedagogical domains. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the two academic disciplines of the two academic recruitment fields with the three domains. Results. The aggregate data showed a prevalence of the biomedical domain over the sport and physical activity ones in both the academic disciplines, in the academic recruitment field of Exercise and sports science. On the other hand, in the academic recruitment of Didactics, special education and educational research, there was a prevalence of the sport and physical activity domain over the biomedical ones. In addition, modest Psycho-pedagogical and biomedical scientific production were found in the academic recruitment fields of Exercise and sports science and Didactics, special education and educational research, respectively. Conclusions. The problem of the different coherence of the scientific profiles of the researchers concerning the relevant academic recruitment field and possibly also to the two academic disciplines was confirmed.