To better understand the development of athletes, researchers have employed what is reffered to as retrospective interviewing (Côte et al., 2005). This involves asking athletes structured questions and collecting data to understand how they perform and what factors affect their performance over time. Other methods have been used to understand development, like semi structured interviews (Bloom, 1985) or questionnaires (Starkes et al., 1996), but these methods have some disadvantages.
Semistructured interviews give different kinds of information that are hard to compare (Ericsson & Simon, 1993), while questionnaires make it difficult to capture the full context of activities due to the responses being static (Côte et al., 2005). The retrospective interview method solves these issues by being standardized and reliable. It has three parts: recording the different sports athletes played, keeping track of how much time they spent on each sport and their performance measures, and describing personal, physical, and situational factors that may affect their main sport. This method helps researchers understand how athletes change over time and what factors contribute to their success. It also ensures the information collected is trustworthy. By using this method, we can learn how to train and develop athletes better.
Bloom, B. S. (Ed.), (1985). Developing talent in young people. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Côte ́, J., Ericsson, K. A., & Law, M. (2005). Tracing the development of athletes using retrospective interview meth- ods: A proposed interview and validation procedure for reported information. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 17, 1 19.
Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1993). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Starkes, J. L., Deakin, J. M., Allard, F., Hodges, N. J., &Hayes, A. (1996). Deliberate practice in sports: What is it anyway? In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports and games (pp. 81 106). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.