Sport and Exercise Psychology – MSc

This course is for people wanting to enter a career in sport or exercise psychology, who hold the British Psychological Society (BPS) Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC) and are working towards becoming a chartered sport and exercise psychologist.

Successfully completing the course provides you with Stage 1 of the BPS Qualification in Sport and Exercise Psychology (QSEP), and prepares you for Stage 2.

You gain a foundation of core skills in the academic and intellectual understanding and researching of sport and exercise psychology. You also begin to consider applied practise in sport and exercise settings, enabling you to be supervised and taught by chartered practising psychologists.

The course provides opportunities to study psychology in both a sport and exercise setting. This enables you to consider the role of psychological interventions for sport performers, coaches and teams as well as lifestyle behaviour change, such as exercise and physical activity adoption.

We develop your work related and applied skills throughout the course although the focus is developing your core psychological skills. This includes your academic understanding in the sport and exercise psychology subject area.

If you do not hold GBC, you can apply for the MSc Sport and Exercise Science (psychology) which has similar modules but does not satisfy Stage 1 of the QSEP. If you want to gain GBC before starting this course, you can complete our Postgraduate Certificate in Psychology.

To gain the masters, you complete a major research project. It may be possible to study your project overseas, if it satisfies the module aims and learning outcomes.

Benefits of studying this course
The course is a collaboration between the sport and exercise science and psychology subject groups, benefiting from the specialist experience and knowledge from both fields

Our teaching team are chartered psychologists and BPS supervisors for the QSEP. They also have substantial practice experience in both elite athlete and physical activity and exercise settings.

75 per cent of Sheffield Hallam’s sport research is of international standard according to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).‘Research Research’ ranks us as fourth in the country for sports research, based on the results of the RAE.