‘Measuring’ methodological artefacts – thinking critically about surveys via knowledge of ‘biobanding’

Shaw, MP, Irgens, CW, Børnes, E, Skogseth, VS and Matthews, CR ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8561-2863, 2025. ‘Measuring’ methodological artefacts – thinking critically about surveys via knowledge of ‘biobanding’. Science and Medicine in Football. ISSN 2473-3938

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Abstract

Surveys can efficiently generate big datasets, but they can misrepresent participants’ understandings. Our article discusses the potential for surveys to produce ‘methodological artifacts’ when measuring complex phenomena, via a project exploring parents’ understandings of biobanding in youth sport. Although 99.5% of survey respondents (n = 389) indicated that they understood biobanding, follow-up interviews with 11 participants revealed this to be spurious data. This contrast between survey and interview responses highlights the limitations of surveys in capturing nuanced understandings. We argue that this misalignment between the object of study and the chosen method results in findings are ‘methodological artifacts’ rather than reasonable representations of social life. As such, the study demonstrates how seemingly simple survey questions about biobanding were actually attempting to tap into the complex processes of human knowledge production. Around this finding, we build an accessible and practical discussion of research philosophy that leads us to caution against developing knowledge claims based on ‘wonky’ epistemological foundations. And we encourage colleagues to carefully consider how their chosen methods might usually frame but also misrepresent, or unduly distort phenomena under investigation. We conclude by calling for deeper reflection on methodological choices, particularly when research is guided by the constraints of academic structures rather than scientific principles.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Science and Medicine in Football
Creators:	Shaw, M.P., Irgens, C.W., Børnes, E., Skogseth, V.S. and Matthews, C.R.
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Date:	15 April 2025
ISSN:	2473-3938
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/24733938.2025.2492628 DOI 2428189 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	17 Apr 2025 15:00
Last Modified:	17 Apr 2025 15:00
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53427

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