Current Status of Graduate Education in Physical Education: Program Demography

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Abstract
The extent of specialization that exists among graduate students, faculty, and program of physical education was explored, particularly as it relates to published rankings of doctoral programs and other sources. Comparisons were made among data obtained from a questionnaire constructed by the investigators, the Gold Book: Directory of Physical Educators in Higher Education 1982–84, and two unpublished reports for the Research Council/Consortium. In addition, comparisons were made with results from other published sources. The graduate programs appeared to be meeting departmental employment needs, with the newly appointed faculty members having specializations consistent with the most prevalent departmental research specializations. Graduate programs were also shown to be fragmented and specialized in multidimensional aspects. As one might expect, the largest proportion of graduate programs and faculty specializations are in the areas of exercise physiology, administration, and professional preparation. However, the dissimilarity in the graduate programs was so diverse that evaluations and comparisons on global scales appear to be useless.