Sports, Exercise and Health Science subject report · May 2014

May 2014 extended essay report Page 1 SPORTS EXERCISE AND HEALTH SCIENCE (SEHS) Overall grade boundaries Grade: E D C B A Mark range: 0-7 8-15 16-22 23-28 29-36 General comments The range and suitability of the work submitted As you would expect from such a wide reaching subject , there were many diverse areas chosen as fields of study. The majority tended to focus on physiological aspects of athletes or performance outcomes. Many included experiments conducted by the candidate. Th ere were some good examples of movement analysis essays, although these were few. T he essays written in the sports psychology field were also very diverse, ranging from ‘ stress and sports performance’ to ‘self-efficacy and injury rehabilitation ’. There were a number of essays that tended to focus on head injuries, concussion and protective headwear. With the rare exception these tended to focus too much on the equipment itself ( which is more a technical and manufacturing issue) and not enough on the physiological and sporting effects that the protection provides. Great care needs to be taken with this area if the candidates choose to look into this field of study, as it can too easily lead away from the field of SEHS. Sadly there were a very few essays that were submitted in the SEHS category that were not subject related. When supervising it is advisable to ensure that the proposed research question and ensuing focus of the candidate’s essay will fit the nature of the subject as outlined in the EE guide. The EE forum on the OCC can be consulted where there is the need for further guidance. Candidate performance against each criterion Criterion A: research question Developing a research question for SEHS proved to be very challenging for many candidates. The large field of study and diverse topic choices led to too many questions being far too broad to be treated within the word limit and were thus deemed unsystematic . Training routines, rate of play, new workouts and soccer in the 21 st century were all broad fields that needed to be defined further. A furthe r problem was the use of the term ‘performance’ when used as an indicator of