TY - JOUR

T1 - Transferring an Analytical Technique from Ecology to the Sport Sciences

AU - Woods, Carl T.

AU - Robertson, Sam

AU - Collier, Neil French

AU - Swinbourne, Anne L.

AU - Leicht, Anthony S.

PY - 2018/3/1

Y1 - 2018/3/1

N2 - Background: Learning transfer is defined as an individual’s capability to apply prior learnt perceptual, motor, or conceptual skills to a novel task or performance environment. In the sport sciences, learning transfers have been investigated from an athlete-specific perspective. However, sport scientists should also consider the benefits of cross-disciplinary learning to aid critical thinking and metacognitive skill gained through the interaction with similar quantitative scientific disciplines. Objective: Using team sports performance analysis as an example, this study aimed to demonstrate the utility of a common analytical technique in ecology in the sports sciences, namely, nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Methods: To achieve this aim, three novel research examples using this technique are presented, each of which enables the analysis and visualization of athlete (organism), team (aggregation of organisms), and competition (ecosystem) behaviors. Results: The first example reveals the technical behaviors of Australian Football League Brownlow medalists from the 2001 to 2016 seasons. The second example delineates dissimilarity in higher and lower ranked National Rugby League teams within the 2016 season. Lastly, the third example shows the evolution of game play in the basketball tournaments between the 2004 and 2016 Olympic Games. Conclusions: In addition to the novel findings of each example, the collective results demonstrate that, by embracing cross-disciplinary learning and drawing upon an analytical technique common to ecology, novel solutions to pertinent research questions within sports performance analysis could be addressed in a practically meaningful way. Cross-disciplinary learning may subsequently assist sport scientists in the analysis and visualization of multivariate datasets.

AB - Background: Learning transfer is defined as an individual’s capability to apply prior learnt perceptual, motor, or conceptual skills to a novel task or performance environment. In the sport sciences, learning transfers have been investigated from an athlete-specific perspective. However, sport scientists should also consider the benefits of cross-disciplinary learning to aid critical thinking and metacognitive skill gained through the interaction with similar quantitative scientific disciplines. Objective: Using team sports performance analysis as an example, this study aimed to demonstrate the utility of a common analytical technique in ecology in the sports sciences, namely, nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Methods: To achieve this aim, three novel research examples using this technique are presented, each of which enables the analysis and visualization of athlete (organism), team (aggregation of organisms), and competition (ecosystem) behaviors. Results: The first example reveals the technical behaviors of Australian Football League Brownlow medalists from the 2001 to 2016 seasons. The second example delineates dissimilarity in higher and lower ranked National Rugby League teams within the 2016 season. Lastly, the third example shows the evolution of game play in the basketball tournaments between the 2004 and 2016 Olympic Games. Conclusions: In addition to the novel findings of each example, the collective results demonstrate that, by embracing cross-disciplinary learning and drawing upon an analytical technique common to ecology, novel solutions to pertinent research questions within sports performance analysis could be addressed in a practically meaningful way. Cross-disciplinary learning may subsequently assist sport scientists in the analysis and visualization of multivariate datasets.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - ecosystem

KW - ecology

KW - human experiment

KW - Physical education and sports

KW - sports science

KW - behavior

KW - multidimensional scaling

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85028352178&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s40279-017-0775-2

DO - 10.1007/s40279-017-0775-2

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 28840544

AN - SCOPUS:85028352178

VL - 48

SP - 725

EP - 732

JO - Sports Medicine

JF - Sports Medicine

SN - 0112-1642

IS - 3

ER -