OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The median citation count of Qualitative Research in Sport Exercise and Health is 2. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2022-05-01 to 2026-05-01.)

Article	Citations
“ We just want to get fit too ”: belonging and inclusion in the gym	47
“Women shouldn’t play rugby” – the gendered and embodied experiences of women players in rugby union	32
‘At least you got to see people when you went out for a walk’: older adults’ lived, embodied experiences during COVID-19 times in the United Kingdom	27
Moving from barriers to collaborative action: supporting social change in community sport through action research with club leaders	24
Towards a sportive agoraphobia of professional athletes	23
Am I becoming better? A life-long and life-wide analysis of sport coaches’ ecological realities and (mal)adaptation in the workplace	20
Co-producing a physical activity intervention with and for people with severe mental ill health – the spaces story	19
Shaping (queer) orientations: affective experiences and professional changes of a transgender and intersex teacher in physical education	19
Feeling good, sensory engagements, and time out: embodied pleasures of running	18
One of these is not like the other: The retrospective experiences of girl athletes playing on boys’ sports teams during adolescence	18
Shifting power relations in disability sport and social activism research: an emancipatory approach	17
“What does skateboarding mean to you?” An exploratory study of Brazilian skateboarders’ developmental experiences	17
A letter to my younger self: using a novel written data collection method to understand the experiences of athletes in Chronic Pain	16
Making moves: involved fathers experiences of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside family walking program	16
Being there in sport, exercise and health ethnography: reflections from the bouldering apprentice	16
Correction	16
‘It’s easier to just keep going’: elaborating on a narrative of forward momentum in sport	15
Infusing ‘post’ thinking in qualitative training using material-performative pedagogies	15
Exploring the leisure time physical activity (LTPA) experiences of women with a physical disability in India	14
Reaching out: help-seeking among professional male ice hockey athletes	14
A Qualitative Investigation of Teachers’ Experiences of Life Skills Development in Physical Education	12
Passing the emotional baton: the roles emotion expressions play amongst gymnasts during competition	11
Love, sacrifice, and rebirth: exploring the embodied narratives of retired women ballet dancers using life history interviews and body mapping	11
“2032 is a dream for us”: exploring amputee football players’ understanding of classification in para-sport and its application to amputee football	11
Perceptions and experiences of exercise participation among persons with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A qualitative study	10

Territorial identification in crisis: fan identity negotiation following club dissolution in Chinese football	9
Drawing strength: evaluating the Tidda Talk programme through comparative body mapping with young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women	9
Understanding workplace collaboration in professional rugby coaching: a dramaturgical analysis	9
Planning for the development of strength and conditioning coaches’ psychosocial competencies	9
‘The gym is an island’ forced migration and youth sports: a case study of a Ukrainian youth basketball coach	9
Co-produced research that bridges the ‘Knowledge Gap’ to support physical activity participation in disabled children and young people with limb difference	8
A process map of flourishing between the coach and athlete in Canadian university sport	8
Hybrid choreographic femininities: DanceSport, physical culture, and performative corporeality in contemporary China	8
Re-signifying HIV through exercise: from death sentence stigma to healthy self-perception	7
Understanding the career experiences and reflections of Special Olympics Canada’s National Team Program coaches	7
“My biggest learning curve:” an interpretive phenomenological analysis of coaches’ experiences of working with athletes who experience a menstrual cycle	7
“Elite but not elitist”: Negotiating race, place, class, and culture in public physical activity spaces	7
Grow through what you go through: a multiple-case study of competitive bodybuilders’ experiences of learning to manage the demands of their engagement in the sport	7
Gay men, well-being, and sport participation: A phenomenological analysis	7
Constructions of athlete mental health post-retirement: a discursive analysis of stigmatising and legitimising versions of transition distress in the Australian broadcast media	7
Kicking crime into touch? A critical ethnography of rugby union, masculinity, and the limits of positive youth development in youth justice	6
“Is Everybody Comfortable?”#xd; Thinking Through Co-design Approaches to Better Support Girls’ Physical Activity in Schools	6
Building bridges: a Qualitative exploration of the athlete – guide partnership in high-performance parasport	6
Recovering with grace: a grounded theory of female artistic sport athletes’ experiences with sport-related concussion	6
(Re)claiming subversive spaces on TikTok: the complexities of body activisms within physical activity cultures	6
Moral, health, and aesthetic risks: performance-enhancing drug use and the culture of silence in the UK strongwoman community	6
Athletes with intellectual impairments and their support personnel’s experience of anti-doping	6
Equipping service providers: how social learning spaces enhance trauma- and violence-informed physical activity practices	6
You wouldn’t let your phone run out of battery: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of male professional football coaches’ well-being	6
A case study of alcohol use among male university rugby players	5
The stigma and challenges faced by retired professional male rugby players	5
Running blind: the sensory practices of visually impaired runners	5
Multi-stakeholder perspectives on co-production: Five key recommendations following the Liverpool Co-PARS project	5
Creating space for meaningful physical activity at home: women’s stories of social interaction, micro-adventure, and the joy of feeling strong	5
Good athlete, bad patient? Navigating life with chronic illness in U.S. collegiate sport	5
Choose your own story: creative non-fiction about athletes attempting to qualify for the Olympics	5
Pumping iron for strength and power: prisoners’ perceptions of a stable body	5
Repairing relationship conflict in community sport work: “Offender” perspectives	4
Women moving forward in pictures: using digital photographs to explore postpartum women’s physical activity experiences	4
Understanding coaches’ perspectives on building trust in sport: a narrative inquiry approach	4
‘You made us feel at home’: towards Indigenous feminist methodologies with young wāhine in sport and exercise	4
An exploration of the perceptions and experiences of professional ballet dancers using a wellness monitoring application	4
Paying attention to tension: studying the perspectives of health care workers, sports club volunteers, and people with type 2 diabetes, engaged in public-civil physical activity collaboration	4
Motherhood and competitive coaching: six stories of generational differences in persisting and resisting gender inequities in sport	4
A sport research teams’ reflections on conducting emotionally demanding research with the bereaved	4
‘I like to run to feel’: embodiment and wearable mobile tracking devices in distance running	4
What helps cardiac patients exercise after treatment, and when? Understanding physical activity and exercise participation following exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation	3
Concussion in professional wrestling: agency, structure and cultural change	3
Whiteness, Canadian university athletic administration, and anti-racism leadership: ‘A bunch of white haired, white dudes in the back rooms’	3
Landscape of practice: a participatory approach to creating a trauma- and violence-informed physical activity social learning space	3
The weight of stigma: Charlie and the fragility of bodies in the age of lightness	3
Experiences of people with prediabetes in a self-compassion and physical activity intervention: a qualitative study using participatory Theme Elicitation	3
“More than just a walk in the park”: A multi-stakeholder qualitative exploration of community-based walking sport programmes for middle-aged and older adults	3
Gatekeeping and ableism in physical education provision for disabled children: perspectives and practices	3
The fitness boom and the pursuit of body ideals: domesticating the use of smartwatches in Ghanaian fitness spaces	3

‘The agenda is to have fun’: exploring experiences of guided running in visually impaired and guide runners	3
Epistemic injustice in physical education and sport: a critical disability studies perspective	3
Poetic confessions of a neophyte qualitative researcher undertaking emotionally demanding research in sport	3
The post-podium athlete body: navigating motherhood, aging, and legacies of abuse in an elite sport comeback	3
Developing 'whole people': a case-study of a sports-friendly school	3
“Everyone does it but no one really wants to talk about it”: roles and meanings of bodily secretions in the confines of distance running groups	3
Uncertainty, loss, ambivalence, and connection: conversations with older adults about social isolation during COVID -19 physical activity programme closures	3
Attachment orientation as a narrative resource: stories of care in the youth athlete-coach relationship	3
Combining crystallisation and creative non-fiction to develop new insights on the politically astute use of humour in sports coaching	3
Fighting forward: purpose as a form of resilience for combat sport athletes	2
From behaviour to birdsong: reorienting the object of physical activity intervention	2
The role of athlete support personnel in preventing doping: a qualitative study of a rugby union academy	2
Bringing it back to show and tell: combining visual and textual data to explore a psychological construct	2
Mapping un/contested knowledge of sex/gender in high performance sport: applying Actor-Network Theory to women’s Olympic Weightlifting	2
‘We are all in this together’: a creative non-fiction story of older adults participating in power-assisted exercise	2
How U.S. college athletes manage COVID-19 related uncertainty	2
Navigating challenges and tensions through engaged pedagogy: reflections on youth Participatory Action research in Sport for Development	2
Listening to the language of the context: problematizing researcher positionality in cross-cultural sport for development ethnographies	2
Understanding parents’ motives for, and beliefs about, enrolling three-to-five-year-old children into organised sporting programs	2
Inescapable tensions: performance and/or psychological well-being in Olympic and Paralympic athletes during sport disruption	2
Exclusion, inclusion and belonging in mainstream and disability sport: Jack’s story	2
Double reflexivity and social change: towards a critical understanding of reflexive actions and discourses in sport for development and peace	2
Navigating the body’s double nature in a sedentary environment: Swedish primary school children’s use of physical activity during the school day	2
Enablers and barriers to physical activity during menstruation: a qualitative study using the theoretical domains framework and COM-B model	2
‘Ahhh it was like paradise, but inside’: children’s experiences and perceptions of a free physical activity program	2
Olympic and Paralympic athletes’ perceptions of the Canadian sport environment and mental health	2
“I am strong, I am fast, I am powerful”: a creative art-based application of body self-compassion with racialised young women athletes in Canada	2
Co-creating knowledge on bicycling: a decolonial feminist participatory action research approach to arts-based methods	2
All roads lead to Rome? Talent narratives of elite athletes, musicians, and mathematicians	2
‘Busy as a bee’: a qualitative dual analysis of life fulfillment among Norwegian competitive recreational athlete mothers in endurance sports	2
Iron woman, shoreline fish: an ethnographic case story of being depressed and the (Un)becoming of a runner	2
Talking about and coping with pain and suffering in ultrarunning as moral language	2