The Delphi method is used to investigate consensus amongst a panel of experts using repeated rounds of a questionnaire, often in healthcare settings. However, many Delphi studies do not report any investigation into what happens to the stability of consensus or the convergence of agreement between the rounds in the study, which may be of importance. In this paper an accessible analytical approach is outlined using graphical presentations of means and standard deviations to identify what happens between rounds. For Delphi studies where the scale upon which experts are expressing their opinions can be considered to be interval, the mean will represent the group opinion whilst the standard deviation will represent the level of agreement. An example Delphi study from a healthcare setting is used to illustrate the methodology.

The literature concerning links between sport knowledge, sport performance and academic ability is reviewed and related to empirical evidence obtained from a GCSE examination in Physical Education, together with GCSE Mathematics and GCSE English grades. For most sports examined, there was a small but significant positive correlation between sport performance and GCSE Mathematics and English grades, confirming the findings of most previous research. Using a multilevel multivariate model, average sport performance, academic ability and sex were important explanatory variables for sport knowledge, yet only academic ability was an important explanatory variable for the concept of physical education knowledge. Ability in game sports, rather than athletics, were related to sport knowledge. Males scored higher for sport knowledge than females, after taking into account sport performance and academic ability. The effects of sport performance and academic ability on sport knowledge were stable across schools, but there was some evidence that the effect of sex varied across schools. These findings support theories of a role for sport knowledge in sport performance; that such a role should be greater in game sports; that academic ability is important for gaining such knowledge; and they highlight differences in sport knowledge between the sexes.

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