Abstract
The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has a central role in high-performance sport in Australia. An important part of this role is to support research in a range of sports disciplines. Sports science research has had many reproducibility issues; therefore, it is important to consider whether the research supported by the AIS is of high quality. To examine this, we conducted a retrospective audit of published papers to estimate the prevalences of good research practice and identify areas for improvement. We extracted information from papers using automated text extraction and research assistants. We identified 280 papers published between 2020 and 2024 with at least one author who was affiliated with the Australian Institute of Sport. The results showed a low engagement with robust study planning, including pre-registration, analysis plans, and sample size calculations. More encouraging results were that almost all papers had research questions that were well justified and answered. Overall, we found many areas where research quality could be improved by better adherence to established good research practices.