High performance sport organisations employ multidisciplinary sport science teams to develop athlete preparation and performance. However, challenges have been identified with respect to cohesion, communication, integration, ineffective knowledge translation, role clarity, confusing language, and conflicting methodologies. A Department of Methodology (DoM) has been proposed as a conceptual framework seeking to address these issues. To move the DoM beyond conceptualisation towards professional practice, this study aimed to establish expert consensus for the implementation of a DoM within applied high performance contexts. Eighty professionals with expertise in multidisciplinary teams completed a three-round, online Delphi survey. In Round One, participants answered 16, open-ended questions across four categories: (1) Coordinating activity through shared principles and language; (2) Communicating coherent ideas; (3) Designing practice landscapes; and (4), General questions of feasibility. Results highlight the importance of building a shared language, establishing common principles, working collaboratively, facilitating continuous knowledge exchange, and designing practice tasks collaboratively. New knowledge is contributed for advancing conceptualisation of a DoM framework by exploring consensus on a range of theoretical- and practitioner-informed recommendations for the successful implementation of a DoM in high-performance sports organisations.
Hydes et al. (Wed,) studied this question.