Mapping the Intellectual Landscape of Coaching Psychology: An Interdisciplinary Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Coaching psychology occupies a distinctively interdisciplinary position in contemporary applied psychology, drawing theoretical and methodological resources from cognitive-behavioural psychology, positive psychology, organisational science, sport science, health promotion, and adult education. Despite rapid growth, sustained questions persist about the domain’s intellectual coherence, theoretical foundations, and cumulative evidence base. The present study integrates a systematic literature review with three bibliometric techniques (citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-word analysis) and a qualitative content analysis to map the intellectual landscape of coaching psychology research. Searches conducted in Web of Science and Scopus yielded a final corpus of 109 peer-reviewed articles (2005–2024), analysed using VOSviewer software. Results reveal a maturing but fragmented domain characterised by strong growth in scholarly output, theoretical plurality spanning cognitive-behavioural, positive psychology, self-determination, sport psychology traditions, and methodological pluralism. Four research clusters were identified: evidence-based coaching outcomes, positive psychology applications, executive coaching and leadership development, and sport and performance coaching psychology. Persistent gaps include limited cross-cultural generalisability, insufficient mechanistic research, and underdeveloped interdisciplinary integration. These findings provide an empirically grounded mapping of coaching psychology’s scholarly landscape, advance understanding of its interdisciplinary character, and offer a targeted research agenda for strengthening theoretical coherence and cumulative knowledge within and across the discipline’s constituent sub-domains.

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