Key positions, roles and challenges within the research-practitioner model
| Position | Role | Challenge |
| Research and performance management | Manage financial support, facilitate stable environment, expectation management, while benefitting from an innovative and economical staffing structure, creative progressive culture and staff stability (eg, duration of PhD) | Appreciation of the unique challenges of each business (ie, academic institution and sporting organisation) |
| Researcher | Deal with more complex problems, working alongside the practitioner-researcher, although has time to be creative and innovative, while benefiting from availability of participants, and data to analyse | They must also appreciate the context |
| Practitioner | On-the-ground support for athletes and coaches, while benefitting from the immediate research findings and learning from within the environment | They must appreciate the complexity of research, and data needed to make meaningful conclusions |
| Research-practitioner | Spends time in both practice and research environments, benefiting from available participants and data, performance questions driving research and a support network should research questions take longer to answer | Ensures appropriate time is spent in both environments (eg, PhD student needs to make sufficient progress with research and not become the practitioner) |