Chapter 3: Research in Exercise Science

By Laura Ellingson-Sayen, PhD

Learning objectives

• Differentiate between qualitative and quantitative research methods and evaluate how the scientific method is used to advance knowledge in exercise science.

• Critically assess the issues of public credibility, media representation, and accessibility of scientific research in exercise science, and explore how these factors affect the dissemination and understanding of knowledge.

• Examine the benefits and drawbacks of social media in spreading exercise science information, identifying how misinformation and commercial interests can influence public perception and professional practice.

Chapter Content

Exercise Science, aka Kinesiology, has developed into a wide-ranging scientific field, as evidenced by the wide variety of topics covered in this class and the careers for which a degree in Exercise Science prepares you. Today exercise scientists have powerful tools and a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, but some modern trends like social media are a double-edged sword. In this chapter, we will explore the current issues and trends in sharing knowledge in our field.

As noted in the last chapter, exercise science has a long history of combining preparation for war, medicine, and sports. During the mid-1900s an unfortunate stereotype developed that exercise science was only about grade school physical education classes. Exercise science has always encompassed so much more than that, though grade school physical education is still a noble and necessary career.

Exercise Science is a natural science backed by qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research generally has to do with gathering non-numerical data, including subjective feelings or opinions on a topic. Quantitative research gathers numerical data to examine relationships among variables like a person’s height and 500m row time, for example. All science and scientific research involves the pursuit of understanding the truth of the world around us. Research in exercise science involves scientific curiosity about the way the human body moves and performs in physical (often athletic) ways.

Most scientific fields are currently facing problems with public credibility and the general population’s understanding or believing any significant results. The lack of public credibility comes from several overlapping problems not unique to exercise science, but is something that any modern exercise scientist will have to deal with in their career.

In America, most scientific research follows a predictable pattern of following the scientific method of systematically testing an idea (a hypothesis) and then publishing the results. While this method has its advantages, there are a few major issues with scientific research being published by subject-specific journals.

Highly educated individuals in a narrow subject matter write up complicated research methods and results to be reviewed by their peers, to be published, read and understood by their peers. Article publication requires specific formatting with concise language used to convey complex topics in as efficient a way as possible. However, this often means that if a person does not have a high level of education in the field of research, they are unlikely to be able to understand it.

For example, take a look at this research article on balance training for preventing falls in older adults. How much of it do you understand? Could you read this over and explain to your grandmother with confidence what exercises she should start doing to improve her balance and decrease her risk of falling? Do you think your grandmother could read it and understand it?

The present problem is that most people are not taught how to read research articles and understand important information. Not to mention how to evaluate whether the methods the scientists used, and the statistics performed are even valid choices to reach the conclusions of the publication. Hopefully, at the end of your education, you can read that same article on older adults’ balance and quickly understand it.

That article has terms, acronyms, and ideas it assumes the reader understands, quickly speeding through concepts that take years to understand and master. Unfortunately, that article is a very average representation of research studies and highlights how hard it is for someone without a college education to understand. A topic like balance and fall injuries impacts all people and their families and significant findings should be made more approachable to the general public.

Most of the time the general public is not aware of new research publications unless it “goes viral ” or has some very controversial conclusions that go against commonly held beliefs.

Unfortunately, if the news journalist or reporter is not highly educated in the area of the research they are reporting on, leading to them taking a single line of the research article and using that for the entire story, not explaining any of the other details, or oversimplifying the results. Imagine this “Tonight on the 5 o’clock news we share with you a new scientific finding that eating salmon can double your risk of dying of a stroke!” But what the news did not share was that the people in the study were asked to eat salmon 3 times a day for 2 months (so very unlikely to be someone’s normal diet), and it did double their risk of dying by a stroke from a risk of 1 in a 100,000 to 2 in a 100,000. Statistically, that did double their risk of death from my stroke, but a very small risk doubled, is still a very small risk.

That takes a lot of the strength out of the story and shows how problematic the media can be for misrepresenting scientific findings.

To make matters worse, many taxpayer-funded research findings are published behind a paywall, meaning anyone that wants to read and learn from the research needs to pay for access. Fortunately this is slowly changing. Funding is also limited and can be hard to obtain, forcing a scientist to also be a grant writer and finance manager. The ethics of receiving money for research also can be difficult to navigate. For example, Coca Cola donates to scientific research in a wide variety of categories. However, when science is funded by a private company can the results be trusted? Often research publications include an area to explain any possible conflicts of interests between the scientists, results, and funding or private interests. If a research article on the health effects of drinking soda is published, but the research is funded by Coca Cola, would you trust the results?

A great resource to save for your upcoming education in exercise science is PubMed, this website is a free-to-use search tool for research in the life sciences. There is also a way to search for only free-to-view articles. Google Scholar is another great, freely-available option to find peer-reviewed journal articles. When you access either of these through the university library’s website you will be able to access many articles for free. Other articles can be obtained through interlibrary loan, which is also a free service provided to students.

Oftentimes scientific journals are not interested in publishing non-novel research. So very few published research articles are reproduced by other scientists, because their work is not likely to be published, as “this has already been done”. Because of this, results are not often independently verified. This means that someone’s published research findings could be a fluke. Even worse, many times when research is reproduced the same findings and conclusions are not found. This is known as the “Replication Crisis”. This crisis is a massive hurdle that all the sciences are facing and will have to solve in the near future. The statistics and methodological issues of the Replication Crisis are out of the realm of the scope of this chapter. However, you will likely learn much more about this in your education, especially in statistics and research methods classes.

Scientific journals usually won’t publish null findings, meaning no difference in the treatment and control group was discovered. These results could still be important discoveries. Maybe there was no difference between barbell squats and leg presses on quad strength improvement over a 6-week training program. This shows null results but is actually important information if true. Publishing well-run research that leads to null results also makes it less likely someone else will repeat the study and find null results. How many people have had the same question and spent months on research only to find null results and just delete their data because it is very unlikely to be published? The answer to this question is unknowable, but interesting to contemplate.

Here is a great guide on what to look for when reviewing research articles for quality (or not so quality) scientific research.

Science is ever-changing with improvements in research tools and equipment. As you will learn, exercise science is a convergence of many fields, and if there is a fundamental change in thinking or an impactful discovery made in those adjacent fields it can impact thought and understanding in exercise science.

An exercise scientist uses a wide range of powerful equipment in research including but not limited to computers, lasers, cameras, gas exchange sensors, and force plates. As technology improves and more detailed data can be recorded, old “truths” may be overturned. Imagine how the understanding of the human foot strike on the ground has improved with cameras, then high definition, and slow motion. It is expected that scientific understanding will continue to improve and be refined as associated technology improves.

As nutrition has advanced, there has been a classic debate on if eggs, especially the yolk, are healthy for humans to eat. The answer to this question changes based on the year and who you ask. This type of reversal on topics can lead to the general public feeling that they cannot trust science, because how can they trust you with complicated questions if you cannot even tell them if eggs are healthy to eat or not?

Social Media, the Good, Bad, and Ugly.

The good: social media is a powerful and cheap tool for spreading knowledge, helping people, and advertising businesses. Social media can build community and allow someone to solidify a reputation of knowledge and experience.

The bad: social media allows anyone to post just about anything without any fact-checking or credentials. So many people are forming opinions on what is good for them based on what an attractive shirtless guy is saying, and assuming he is speaking facts because “Look how fit he is!” Most people do not understand that there are very few simple answers in exercise science. Even the most basic concepts of writing a training program require knowing a person’s history, their goals, how much time they can commit to training, what exercises they like to do, what equipment they have available to them, and their current fitness. People are unique, they have different injuries, goals, interests, and nutritional preferences making all aspects of exercise science more complex than a one size fits all pill. Just because it works for an “attractive shirtless guy” on social media does not mean it will work for anyone else.

The ugly: Building off the bad, people can make a lot of money praying on others’ lack of education and insecurities. Social media can be rampant with misinformation, fake reviews, bought likes and followers and scams to steal people’s money.  As a future professional in the field, you will likely be fighting against all of this in the world of modern exercise science.

In conclusion, exercise scientists have changed the world of health, fitness, and athletic performance in the last century through careful examination of human movement and its applications. There are many new research topics to tackle in the upcoming years as exercise scientists including national weight gain and associated health consequences, social and racial inequality, continuing advancement for disabled athletes, and navigating how to fairly include trans athletes in sports competitions, among others. This is an exciting field to be involved in as there are many areas in which to contribute.

Copyright Information

This chapter, Research in Exercise Science, by Laura Ellingson-Sayen is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. It was adapted from the “Modern Kinesiology” chapter in Introduction to Kinesiology by Weston Titus, which is licensed under CC BY SA 4.0. The adaptations made include removing sections, updating grammar/spelling conventions, and making content more relevant for our course.