Psychological Research in Sport and Health: Advancing Interdisciplinary Research from Mind to Movement

Sport and physical activity are profoundly human experiences. They are shaped not only by physical capacity, but also by how individuals think, feel, learn, adapt, interact, and respond to challenge. From an athlete preparing for competition to a child acquiring motor skills, an older adult attempting to remain active, or a patient undergoing rehabilitation, psychological and behavioral processes are inseparable from movement, performance, health, and quality of life.
It is within this context that we launch Psychological Research in Sport and Health (PRSH), an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal established to advance research at the intersection of psychology, sport, physical activity, health, and human behavior.
Our purpose is not simply to create another publication venue. PRSH aims to provide an interdisciplinary scientific home where important questions about human performance and health can be examined through complementary theoretical and methodological perspectives. Contemporary sport and health sciences increasingly require such integration. Psychological factors including anxiety, motivation, confidence, attention, resilience, emotion regulation, and decision-making cannot always be understood independently of physiology, cognition, social context, learning history, and environmental influences. For this reason, PRSH adopts a deliberately broad scientific scope. Sport psychology forms an important foundation of the journal, including research on competitive anxiety, psychological skills, motivation, confidence, resilience, athlete development, coaching, officiating, and decision-making. However, our scope extends well beyond competitive sport. We welcome research in exercise and health psychology addressing physical activity, sedentary behavior, adherence, rehabilitation, psychological well-being, mental health, and behavior change across the lifespan. We also recognize the growing importance of positive psychology. Scientific research should examine not only psychological difficulties, stress, injury, and performance failure, but also well-being, hope, adaptive coping, positive emotion, psychological strengths, and human flourishing through sport and physical activity.
A further priority of PRSH is psychometrics and psychological assessment. Progress in behavioral science depends on the quality of its measurements. We therefore welcome rigorous studies involving scale development, translation, cross-cultural adaptation, construct validation, reliability, measurement invariance, and contemporary psychometric methods. Instruments developed in one language or cultural context should not automatically be assumed to function equivalently elsewhere. As sport and health research becomes increasingly international, culturally appropriate measurement is essential for credible science.
PRSH also seeks to encourage dialogue among psychology, neuroscience, motor behavior, and emerging technologies. Developments in EEG, fNIRS, neurofeedback, wearable technologies, digital assessment, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are creating new possibilities for understanding performance, cognition, emotion, and health. Yet technological sophistication should always serve a meaningful scientific question. Innovation is most valuable when it improves measurement, tests theory, clarifies mechanisms, or supports more effective interventions.
Motor learning and motor control are equally important within this interdisciplinary vision. Human movement emerges from the continuous interaction of perception, cognition, action, experience, and environment. Research on skill acquisition, attention, feedback, practice, motor competence, decision-making, and brain–behavior relationships can provide important insights for both performance and health. Bringing motor behavior researchers into closer dialogue with psychologists, neuroscientists, health scientists, and practitioners is therefore an important part of the journal's mission.
However, interdisciplinary breadth alone does not define a strong scientific journal. Scientific quality must remain the central criterion. PRSH is committed to methodological rigor, transparent reporting, research integrity, and responsible interpretation of evidence. We welcome quantitative, qualitative, experimental, observational, psychometric, neuroscientific, and mixed-method research, provided that the chosen methodology is appropriate for the research question and implemented with sufficient rigor. Novelty matters, but novelty without sound methodology has limited scientific value.
We also support the broader movement toward transparency and reproducibility. Authors are encouraged to provide sufficient methodological detail, report analytical decisions clearly, follow appropriate reporting guidelines, and, whenever ethically and practically possible, make research materials, protocols, and data accessible. These practices strengthen confidence in scientific findings and facilitate cumulative knowledge.
Ethical responsibility is equally fundamental. PRSH is committed to responsible authorship, protection of research participants, disclosure of funding and conflicts of interest, accurate reporting, and internationally recognized standards of publication ethics.
The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence makes these responsibilities particularly timely. AI-based tools may support language editing, data processing, information synthesis, and methodological development, but they also raise concerns regarding accuracy, fabricated information, confidentiality, authorship, and accountability. PRSH supports the responsible and transparent use of such technologies while maintaining a clear principle: scientific responsibility remains human. Authors remain accountable for every claim, reference, analysis, interpretation, and conclusion published under their names.
Our vision is also explicitly international. Scientific quality is not defined by geography. Important evidence may emerge from universities, laboratories, schools, clinics, sport organizations, and communities across the world. Yet many countries, languages, cultures, and populations remain underrepresented in the international literature. PRSH seeks to contribute to a more inclusive scientific environment in which manuscripts are evaluated primarily according to their scientific merit, methodological quality, relevance, and contribution to knowledge.
This vision is supported by an interdisciplinary editorial community representing expertise in sport psychology, motor behavior, psychometrics, psychology, and neuroscience. Our responsibility as editors extends beyond accepting or rejecting manuscripts. We aim to build a culture of peer review that is rigorous, independent, fair, constructive, and respectful. High standards and supportive scientific communication should reinforce, rather than oppose, one another.
We also believe that publication should not be viewed as the final destination of research. Scientific knowledge achieves greater value when it improves understanding, informs practice, generates better questions, and contributes to the lives of individuals and communities. Athletes, coaches, physical educators, psychologists, clinicians, rehabilitation professionals, policymakers, and health practitioners should not simply provide data for research; they should also benefit from the knowledge that research generates. For this reason, PRSH seeks to strengthen the connection between fundamental and applied science. Mechanistic studies may explain why an effect occurs, applied research may determine whether it operates in real-world settings, psychometric research may ensure that relevant constructs are measured accurately, and qualitative research may reveal experiences that quantitative measures alone cannot capture. These approaches should be viewed as complementary rather than competing forms of evidence.
As PRSH begins its first volume, we recognize that the credibility of a journal is not established by its name, website, or editorial statement. It is built article by article, review by review, and editorial decision by editorial decision. Scientific trust must be earned through consistency, independence, fairness, methodological rigor, ethical responsibility, and the quality of the work ultimately added to the scientific record.
We therefore invite researchers in sport psychology, exercise and health psychology, positive psychology, behavioral science, psychometrics, neuroscience, motor behavior, rehabilitation, digital health, and related fields to consider PRSH a platform for meaningful scientific exchange. We particularly welcome research that crosses disciplinary boundaries, improves measurement, advances theory, challenges assumptions with robust evidence, develops innovative interventions, or helps translate scientific knowledge into better practice. We also invite both early-career and established scholars to participate in this developing scientific community as authors, reviewers, readers, collaborators, and critical voices. A journal becomes influential not because its editors declare it to be so, but because the scientific community finds value in the questions it raises, the standards it protects, and the knowledge it disseminates.
We are grateful to Semnan University, our editorial team, reviewers, and colleagues who have contributed to the establishment of PRSH. The launch of the journal is an important beginning, but the greater challenge lies ahead: to build a publication that is scientifically credible, internationally visible, methodologically rigorous, ethically responsible, and genuinely useful to researchers and practitioners.
We begin this journey with a simple principle:
Better science should lead to a better understanding of people in movement, performance, and health.
We invite the international scientific community to build that understanding with us.