Content Analysis and Comparison of Iranian Journals in Motor Behavior and Sport Psychology Domains

The purpose of this study was to analyze the content of papers in scientific journals of motor behavior and sport psychology in Iran from 2009 to 2017. The present study was an applied research and content analysis method. In this study, a total of 814 papers have been reviewed in six different journals.For this purpose, content analysis was done quantitatively and in terms of subject matter dispersion. After referring to archived published journals and the entry of some raw data in the coding sheet, descriptive statistics were calculated using SPSS software and frequency distribution tables were created. The results showed that the Journal of Motor Behavior with the highest number 28% and the Journal of Sport Management Research and Motor Behavior 5.7% had the lowest number of papers. It was observed Sports Psychology Studies Journal had the shortest review processes3.50±2.227 months). The authors of the papers were mostly men 70.9% in PhD degree 11.8% with assistant professor position 20.5%, and motor behavior field 71.4%. We also found that most of the papers have been published in sport psychology domain and motor learning domain was in the second position. Less attention has been paid in paper publications to the motor and control development domains. Meanwhile, topic of emotion 13.3% was the most respected by researchers to study. In the reviewed papers, most of subjects were non-athlete and in terms of skill level they were beginner and only 7.2% were elite. Most of papers were about "health". The major statistical samples of the papers were human, young and healthy subjects, and only 12.5% of the subjects had disabilities. The results showed that English language references were used more than Persian sources in the papers. The highest self-citations of the journal were in the Journal of Motor Learning and development -Sport (124 self-citations) and the most self-citation of the author was related to the Journal of Motor Behavior (146 self-citations). Most researches were practical and used semi-experimental research method. It was also found that Tehran University (477 cases) has the largest share of papers among participating academic institutions. little attention has been paid to community of the elderly and the disables, as well as the imbalance of studies conducted in various areas of motor behavior, the identification of research priorities based on the need-assessment in various journals and informing researchers can be a step towards the elimination of scientific and research deficiencies. The lack of qualitative research, the lack of interdisciplinary studies, the low share of associate and full professors in paper publication, the low tendency for research work on motor control and development domains and low focus on children and the elderly as a research sample are some important weaknesses and limitations in reviewed papers.