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Exploring of Knowledge Structure and Research Trend in Soccer Psychology Research: Using LDA Topic Modeling
Version 1
: Received: 2 August 2023 / Approved: 3 August 2023 / Online: 3 August 2023 (05:20:09 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Lee, J.W.; Han, D.H. Data Analysis of Psychological Approaches to Soccer Research: Using LDA Topic Modeling. Behav. Sci. 2023, 13, 787. Lee, J.W.; Han, D.H. Data Analysis of Psychological Approaches to Soccer Research: Using LDA Topic Modeling. Behav. Sci. 2023, 13, 787.
Abstract
This study aims to identify the knowledge structure and research trends of soccer psychology research during the last 33 years (1990–2022). Data were obtained from 1,863 papers from the Web of Science database. The data were collected through keyword text mining and data preprocessing to determine the keywords needed for analysis. Based on the keywords, latent Dirichlet allocation-based topic modeling analysis was performed to analyze the topic distribution of papers and explore research trends by topic area. The topic modeling process included four topic area and fifty topics. The “Coaching Essentials in Football” topic area had the highest frequency, but it was not statistically identified as a trend. However, coaching, including training, is expected to continue to be an important research topic, as it is a key requirement for success in the highly competitive elite football world. Interest in the research field of “Psychological Skills for Performance Development” has waned in recent years. This may be due to the predominance of other subject areas rather than a lack of interest. Various high-tech interventions and problem-solving attempts are being made in this field, providing opportunities for qualitative and quantitative expansion. “Motivation, cognition, and emotion” is a largely underrated subject area in soccer psychology. This could be because survey-based psychological evaluation attempts have decreased as the importance of rapid field application has been emphasized in recent soccer-related studies. However, measuring psychological factors contributes to the study of football psychology through a new methodology and theoretical background. Recognizing the important role of psychological factors in player performance and mental management, as well as presenting new research directions and approaches that can be directly applied to the field, will advance soccer psychology research.
Keywords
soccer; psychology; research trends; data science; topic modeling; bibliometric
Subject
Social Sciences, Behavior Sciences
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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