How to Write a Sports Profile Jonah Schuman Updated July 21, Often times, athletes and coaches are among the most interesting people that a journalist will get to profile. They're quirky, unique, smart and sometimes oddly-mannered. To truly write a good sports profile, you need to get inside the head of your subject. Here are some good ways to make your story come to life.
Avoid common errors of punctuation and grammar. Use the first person I, we rather than the passive voice. Link your ideas into a sensible sequence without repetitions or discontinuities.
Get feedback on your article from colleagues.
In this Background section, make the topic interesting by explaining it in plain language and by relating it to actual or potential practical applications. Explain any scientific principles underlying the topic.
Define and justify the scope of the review: Be specific about any database search you performed. Include the key words you used, and the ways you refined your search if necessary.
We read 47 of these as full papers. Of the 41 papers cited in this review, we were able to obtain the following only in abstract form: Do not give a summary paper-by-paper; instead, deal with themes and draw together results from several papers for each theme.
I have identified four themes for this section: These themes are dealt with under subheadings. I encourage you to use such subheadings, which will make it easier for you to write the review and easier for others to read it.
Quality of Published Work Look critically at any published work. The fact that something has been published does not mean the findings are automatically trustworthy.
Some research designs are better than others see Hopkins, a. The most trustworthy conclusions are those reached in double-blind randomized controlled trials with a representative sample of sufficient size to detect the smallest worthwhile effects.
The weakest findings are those from case studies. In between are cross-sectional studies, which are usually plagued by the problem of interpreting cause and effect in the relationship between variables. How subjects were sampled is an important issue. Be wary of generalizing results from novice athletes to elites.
Something that enhances performance in young or untrained individuals may not work so well in highly trained athletes, who may have less headroom for improvement. There are big differences in the way data can be collected.
At one extreme are qualitative methods, in which the researcher interviews subjects without using formal psychometric instruments questionnaires. At the other extreme are quantitative methods, in which biological or behavioral variables are measured with instruments or techniques of known validity and reliability.
In the middle are techniques with uncertain precision and questionnaires with open-ended responses. Qualitative assessment is time consuming, so samples are usually small in size and non-representative, which in turn limit the conclusions that can be made about effects in a population.
The conclusions may also be biased by the prejudices of the researcher-interviewer. Quantitative data collection is more objective, but for some projects it could miss important issues that would surface in an interview.
A combination of qualitative methods for pilot work and quantitative methods for a larger study should therefore produce valuable conclusions, depending, of course, on the design. You will probably find that your topic has been dealt with to some extent in earlier reviews.
Cite the reviews and indicate the extent to which you have based your review on them. Make sure you look at the key original papers cited in any earlier reviews, to judge for yourself whether the conclusions of the reviewers are justified.
Reviews, like original research, vary in quality. Problems with reviews include poor organization of the material and lack of critical thought. Some of the better reviews attempt to pull together the results of many papers using the statistical technique of meta-analysis.
The outcomes in such reviews are usually expressed as relative risk, variance explained, or effect size, terms that you will have to understand and interpret in your review if you meet them.Some veterans blame deadly health effects on war-zone exposure to open-pit burning Updated Nov 18 at PM.
How To Write a Sports Article Strong lead, clear writing, quotes, and more. Good for upper elementary and up. Good for upper elementary and up. How to Write a Sports Story Examples and practice for middle school and above.
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In the sports world, a soft news piece could be a simple interview with an athlete, an opinion piece about a rule change, or a how-to article on how to select the best piece of equipment.
It could even be a Buzzfeed-style list. To truly write a good sports profile, you need to get inside the head of your subject. Here are some good ways to make your story come to life. Find out about your subject off the field / court: In order to understand anyone as an athlete, you have to understand them as a person first.
How To Write A Sports Report In 4 Steps It takes time to write an article or Read More. How To Write Gardening Articles: Tips For Gardeners And Writers. If you want make a change or wish to remove your job ad in the future, please email [email protected]veblog.com