نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 استادیار گروه علوم ورزشی، دانشکده ادبیات و علوم انسانی، دانشگاه قم، قم، ایران.
2 گروه علم اطلاعات و دانش شناسی، دانشکده ادبیات و علوم انسانی، دانشگاه قم، قم، ایران
چکیده
کلیدواژهها
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
Introduction: Sports psychology has emerged as one of the most dynamic and interdisciplinary branches of psychological science over the past several decades, focusing on the psychological foundations of behavior in sports and physical activity. This scientific field has successfully established its position not only in enhancing the performance of professional athletes but also in improving mental health and quality of life among physically active individuals. Despite the exponential growth of sports psychology research worldwide, the scientific contribution of developing countries, including Iran, remains limited or less recognized. This gap is particularly significant because findings from Western societies may not be directly generalizable to other cultural contexts due to cultural, social, and structural differences.
Aim: The present study aims to map the scientific landscape of sports psychology research at both global and Iranian levels, identify thematic trends and scientific collaboration patterns, discover existing research gaps, and determine Iran's position in the global scientific production of this field.
Methods: This descriptive-analytical study employed a scientometric and bibliometric approach. The population consisted of all scientific publications indexed in Web of Science, Scopus, Islamic World Science Citation Database, and Noormags databases from January 2000 to December 2025. After systematic screening and deduplication, 13,427 international articles and 1,158 Iranian articles remained for final analysis. Data analysis was performed using VOSviewer for co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence networks, Bibliometrix for thematic mapping and evolution analysis, and CiteSpace for co-citation analysis and burst detection.
Results: The findings revealed exponential growth in sports psychology publications worldwide, with the peak occurring in 2021. The United States, United Kingdom, and Canada had the largest share of scientific production in this field. Four main thematic clusters were identified including performance and athletic success, mental health in sports, social and environmental factors, and innovative approaches with technology. Emerging topics identified through burst detection included mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic (burst strength 15.8), cognitive training (12.4), artificial intelligence in sports (10.9), virtual reality (9.7), and esports psychology (8.5). Iran's contribution to global scientific production was less than one percent, with research focus primarily on competitive anxiety, self-efficacy, mindfulness, and athlete burnout among adolescent athletes. Iranian researchers have primarily utilized the Persian version of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised (CSAI-2R) standardized by Mostafaei (2016).
Conclusion: Sports psychology has reached a stage of maturity and thematic diversity at the international level, characterized by the coexistence of classical topics and emerging technology-focused themes. Despite Iran's progress in recent years, there remains a significant gap compared to leading countries. Strengthening international collaborations, investing in emerging topics such as digital interventions and artificial intelligence, localizing measurement tools, and prioritizing longitudinal and intervention studies with long-term follow-up represent critical priorities for Iranian researchers in this field. The findings provide a data-driven roadmap for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in sports psychology.
کلیدواژهها [English]
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