Modelling the structure of the sports management research field using the BERTopic approach

La gestión deportiva es un campo de estudio que ha crecido considerablemente. Sin embargo, se sabe poco sobre su estructura. Por ello, este artículo presenta un enfoque de aprendizaje de clusters no supervisado basado en un análisis temático de los resúmenes. Se aplica a un amplio corpus de documentos de gestión deportiva para conocer la estructura de la disciplina. Se descargó un total de 3.704 registros de la base de datos Scopus. Los datos se procesaron mediante el enfoque BERTopic. Los resultados indican que la gestión deportiva es un campo de estudio en crecimiento y de gran colaboración. Los temas (o tópicos) estaban diversificados (25 clusters). Debido a su proximidad, también se identificaron siete metatópicos. Mientras que el interés por los grandes eventos deportivos y el impacto social del turismo deportivo ha disminuido en los últimos años, otros campos de estudio, como el espíritu empresarial, la innovación y la gestión de clubes deportivos, han captado el interés de los investigadores.
Sports management is a field of study that has grown significantly. However, little is known about its structure. Therefore, this article presents an unsupervised cluster learning approach based on a thematic analysis of abstracts. It applies to a large corpus of sports management documents to gain insight into the structure of the discipline. A total of 3,704 records were downloaded from the Scopus database. Data were processed using the BERTopic approach. The results indicate that sports management is a growing and highly collaborative field of study. The themes (or topics) were diversified (25 clusters). Due to their proximity, seven meta topics were also identified. While the interest in major sports events and the social impact of sports tourism has lessened in recent years, other fields of study, such as entrepreneurship, innovation and sports club management, have captured the interest of researchers.