MSc Sport Psychology

The MSc Sport Psychology at Nottingham Trent University offers an intensive one-year full-time programme that equips students with specialist knowledge and applied skills in sport and exercise psychology, including performance enhancement and youth athlete development. It is ideal for graduates in sport science, psychology, or related areas who aim to work with athletes, coaches and sporting organisations, or move into research in performance, cognition or wellbeing contexts.

Curriculum structure:
In the first part of the year, you engage with modules such as Performance Psychology—examining resilience, stress, emotion, and how psychology supports peak performance—and The Developing Athlete—exploring youth sport development, stakeholders and supporting athlete wellbeing and performance pathways. You also study Learning and Cognition, where you learn how cognition, attention, fatigue, learning and memory processes apply across the lifespan in sport and exercise. As you progress, you’ll take Mental Health In and Through Sport, developing insight into athlete and coach mental health, prevention, and intervention in sport contexts, and Research Methods in Sport Psychology, building qualitative and quantitative research skills tailored to sport. The programme culminates in a substantial Research Project (60 credits), where you design, execute and report an original empirical investigation, applying your theoretical and methodological learning to a practical sport-psychology issue.

Focus areas: “performance psychology; youth athlete development; cognition & learning in sport; mental health in sport; research methods; empirical project”
Learning outcomes: “demonstrate advanced understanding of sport psychology theory and practice; apply psychological skills to performance, development and wellbeing contexts; design and conduct independent empirical sport-psychology research; communicate findings effectively to athletes, coaches and scientific audiences”
Professional alignment (accreditation): The programme is aligned with the British Psychological Society (BPS) accreditation pathway (Stage 1 for Sport & Exercise Psychology) and relates to the Chartered Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) SEPAR route, positioning graduates toward roles as sport psychology practitioners or researchers. 
Reputation (employability rankings): Nottingham Trent University is ranked in the Top 150 globally for Psychology according to the QS World University Subject Rankings 2025.  The Department of Sport, Health and Performance Enhancement Research Centre (SHAPE) at NTU is research-active and noted for applied excellence in sport psychology, contributing to high employability outcomes for graduates.