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Previous researchers have indicated that a sense of community and social support are vital to referee retention; however, little is known about the connection between specific characteristics of sports officials' networks and retention. To better understand the sports officiating shortage, researchers explored the social support networks of 116 referees utilizing egocentric network analysis. The authors suggest that retention of sports officials depends on the interpersonal ties and network structures within which the referees are embedded. Specifically, resulting hierarchical models confirmed that retention relationships among officials are a multilevel phenomenon, and that outside communication and community were vital network characteristics that fostered retention relationships. Network size, tenure, and the officiating level also were significant when considering an official's network and its impact on retention. Areas for future research and suggestions for referee managers are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Athletes may be especially primed to become referees; yet, we do not know what former athletes think about this career choice. To address the worldwide referee shortage, it is important to better understand athletes' perceptions of refereeing. From a Career Contingency Model framework, it is evident athletes' perception would influence their decision to consider refereeing. This study's aim was to examine athletes' perceptions of the refereeing environment (RQ1) and identify referee recruitment barriers (RQ2). Utilizing a descriptive phenomenological approach, 23 current and former athletes took part in semistructured interviews based on their lived experience as an athlete. The participants identified the officiating environment as a high-stress environment with financial instability, while time and lack of knowledge and support were identified as recruitment barriers. The results contributed to the burgeoning line of research attempting to address the global referee shortage and provide both theoretical and practical implications for sport managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated the impact of video speed on judging the duration of sport performance. In three experiments, they investigated whether the speed of video presentation (slow motion vs. real time) has an influence on the accuracy of time estimation of sporting activities (n1 = 103; n2 = 100; n3 = 106). In all three studies, the time estimation was more accurate in real time than in slow motion, in which time was overestimated. In two studies, the authors initially investigated whether actions in slow motion are perceived to last longer because the distance they cycled or ran is perceived to be longer (n4 = 92; n5 = 106). The results support the hypothesis that the duration of sporting activities is estimated more accurately when they are presented in real time than in slow motion. Sporting officials' judgments that require accurate time estimation may thus be biased when based on slow-motion displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present research was to investigate whether claims (postperformance nonverbal emotional expressions) influence people in evaluating performance during surf contests. To test this research question, the authors sampled videos from professional surf contests and asked laypeople (Experiment 1; N = 110) and surf judges (Experiment 2; N = 41) to evaluate the performance in 2 online experiments. A subset of the surfing performances showed surfers displaying postperformance emotional expressions (claims), while another subset showed the same performances without the claims (nonverbal emotional expressions). Both experiments provided evidence that both laypeople and surf judges were biased by claims in judging surfing performances, with claims better than the performances without claims. The findings are in line with social-cognitive models emphasizing the socioconsequences of emotion expressions. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for sport competitions that rely on judging sport performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many new video-based technologies (e.g., eye trackers, point-of-view camera) have been integrated into sport referee performance monitoring and training. Mobile 360° video (an omnidirectional video-capture tool affixed to the referee during their performance using a chest harness) provides moving images recorded from a first-person perspective. This case study explored rugby union referees' and referee coaches' engagement with mobile 360° video during a viewing of another referee's performance. Using an other-confrontation interview approach, referees' and referee coaches' cognitive activity (interests, concerns, noticing, and knowledge) while viewing mobile 360° video was elicited and studied. Participants experienced heightened immersion in the situation, as well as enhanced discovery and noticing behavior, and they constructed different types of embodied and corporeal knowledge. Using a rugby union setting, this occurred through enhanced perceptual involvement provided by mobile 360° video for reflection on referee positioning and movement, contextual inference about decisions, and sensitivity to player cues and interactions. This study provides preliminary evidence for the utility and acceptability of mobile 360° video as a pedagogical innovation in referee training to enhance referees' decision making, game management, and reflexivity. Limitations, challenges, and applications of immersive mobile 360° video as a pedagogical tool in rugby union refereeing and other sports are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication and player management are integral to effective sport officiating, but most research has focused on physical performance and decision making. The few previous studies of officiating communication tended to use "transmission" conceptualizations of communication (e.g., decision communication, impression management). Eleven officiating-development managers and coaches from 7 peak Australian sport bodies were interviewed to explore conceptualizations of communication and player management, the way officials improve, and the role of the sport bodies in improvement. Four salient themes emerged in conceptualizations of effective officiating communication and player management: personal qualities of the official, 1-way-communication direction giving and impression management, situation monitoring (interpreting player and context), and skilled interaction (adapting communication appropriately for context). The findings highlight a mismatch between (a) interpretive and interactive communication skills perceived to be most important and challenging and (b) the training that is currently provided to officials. There was general commonality in practice and training issues across sport codes. The article makes theoretical contributions to the study of sport-official communication and practical recommendations for improving approaches to training skilled communication and player management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referees are key sport personnel who have important responsibilities both on- and off- the field. Organized competition would not survive without referees, yet little is known about what cause referees to discontinue in the role. This research examines the experiences of former referees so that managers may better understand strategies that might encourage more referees to be retained. Fifteen previous basketball referees were interviewed about their refereeing experience. Ten themes emerged that were related to the sport development stages of referee recruitment, referee retention, and referee advancement. The results indicate that issues experienced during the retention phase (Problematic Social Interaction, Training/Mentoring, and Lack of Referee Community) and then at the advancing stage (Lack of Administrator Consideration, Administrator Decision Making, and Sport Policies) are linked to eventual departure from the role. Interestingly, off-court factors were reported as more influential in the decision to leave. Managerial strategies and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied the influence of contextual factors and the referees' own motor experience on the quality of their perceptual judgments. The theoretical framework combined the social cognition approach with the embodied cognition, and enabled us to determine whether judgments were biased or not by using a combination of contextual and internal factors. Sixty fully-qualified and aspiring judo referees were tested in a video-based decision-making task in which they had to decide when to stop the ground contact phase. The decision task differed depending on whether one contestant dominated the other or whether they were equal in the prior phase. Results indicated that the referees' motor experience influenced perceptual judgments and interacted with contextual factors, enhancing the need for a combination of social and embodied cognition to explain biases in referees' judgments. Practical considerations were discussed in this paper, such as, whether referees need recent motor experience and how this could influence rules of governing bodies for officiating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many fouls committed in football (called soccer in some countries) are ambiguous, and there is no objective way of determining who is the "true" perpetrator or the "true" victim. Consequently, fans as well as referees often rely on a variety of decision cues when judging such foul situations. Based on embodiment research, which links perceptions of height to concepts of strength, power, and aggression, we argue that height is going to be one of the decision cues used. As a result, people are more likely to attribute a foul in an ambiguous tackle situation to the taller of two players. We find consistent support for our hypothesis, not only in field data spanning the last seven UEFA Champions League and German Bundesliga seasons, as well as the last three FIFA World Cups, but also in two experimental studies. The resulting dilemma for refereeing in practice is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referees in German first-league soccer games do not award as many yellow cards in the beginning of a game as should be statistically expected. One explanation for this effect is the concept of game management (Mascarenhas, Collins, & Mortimer, 2002). Alternatively, the consistency model (Haubensak, 1992) explains the effect as a necessity of the judgment situation: Referees need to calibrate a judgment scale, and, to preserve degrees of freedom in that scale, they need to avoid extreme category judgments in the beginning (i.e., yellow cards). Experiment 1 shows that referees who judge scenes in the context of a game award fewer yellow cards than referees who see the same scenes in random order. Experiment 2 shows the combined influence of game management (by explicitly providing information about the game situation) and calibration (early vs. late scenes in the time course of a game). Theoretical implications for expert refereeing and referee training are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of several recent studies have called into question the factorial integrity of the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS; Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990) because two items (14 and 20) that loaded on the Concentration Disruption subscale in our validation and cross-validation samples have loaded or cross-loaded on the Worry subscale in other samples. We agree that this is a serious problem, and we evaluate proposed modifications of the SAS on both conceptual and empirical grounds. For researchers currently using the SAS, we recommend a new scoring system that deletes two troublesome Concentration Disruption items and one Somatic Anxiety item, preserving separate and factorially consistent Somatic, Worry, and Concentration Disruption subscales. We present evidence that our original Worry scale provides a better CFA fit than a suggested "cognitive anxiety" alternative that combines the two concentration disruption items with the Worry scale items. We also describe nonreplication of the SAS three-factor structure in child samples and caution researchers against computing subscale scores for child samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To identify a framework for referee training and selection, based on the key areas of effective performance, we conducted content analyses on Rugby Football Union referee assessor reports, referee training materials, performance profiles from a group of English premier league referees, and a review of published research on sports officiating. The Cornerstones Performance Model of Refereeing emerged, overarched by the psychological characteristics of excellence (see McCaffrey & Orlick, 1989) and featuring four key areas: (a) knowledge and application of the law; (b) contextual judgment; (c) personality and management skills; and (d) fitness, positioning, and mechanics. Focus group interviews confirmed the usefulness of the model as an assessment and training tool, which the RFU now use to develop referees throughout England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the relationship between coaching efficacy and imagery use. Eighty-nine coaches completed the Coaching Efficacy Scale and a modified version of the Sport Imagery Questionnaire. Results showed significant positive correlations among the coaching efficacy subscales and imagery functions. Regression analyses showed that the significant predictor for game strategy efficacy was CG imagery. Predictors for motivation efficacy included career record and MG-M imagery. MG-M imagery and total years of coaching were the significant predictors for total efficacy scores and character building efficacy. The only significant predictor for teaching technique efficacy was CS. The results replicate and extend the relationships found between efficacy and imagery for athletes and show that imagery also may be an effective strategy to build and maintain coaching efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the issues on aggression and violence in sport. Correction of the International Society of Sport Psychology Position Stand report; Controversies of defining aggression and violence; Effects of the decisions of sports officials on inflaming violence and aggression; Role of media in depicting aggression and violence.

Examines the sequential effects in referee decisions on penalty decisions in soccer. Observation of negative contingency in successive penalty decisions of the same team; Impact of initial decisions on later decisions; Differences between penalty and free-kick decisions.

The article presents a study examining the judgment bias in calls made by first base baseball umpires. The study was testing whether the phenomenon of prior entry, where the umpire receives the auditory stimulus of the ball hitting the first baseman's glove before the visual stimulus of the runner reaching the base, affects calls at first base.

s study investigated the use of normative rules by baseball umpires. Normative rules are informal standards of conduct that deviate from the official rules of sport. Sixteen umpires, 25 coaches, and 27 baseball players defined the official upper and lower boundaries of the strike zone, marked these official boundaries on a Strike Zone Form, and marked where they actually call, or believe umpires call, the boundaries. Umpires were significantly more knowledgeable about rules than players were. Umpires reported setting the upper boundary of the strike zone significantly lower (an average of 2.64 inches) than the official rule specifies. Coaches and players reported that umpires lower the boundaries, but players overestimated how much umpires deviate from the rule-book boundaries. Results suggest that umpires consciously violate official rules. The ethical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the research on athletic officials has focused on their psychological traits. Researchers have considered the officials' social world, as well as the emergent and processual nature of their activities in game situations. The present research provides an analysis of data on referees as they enforce rules and norms within the fluid context of basketball games. Quantitative data were collected from a survey of 689 high school basketball officials; additionally, qualitative data were gathered from the open-ended portions of the survey instrument as well as from participant observation and discussions with other officials. The primary conceptual areas generated from the research included control of the game, supplementation of rules, and the communication of decisions by officials. The findings are related to other areas of social control in which the rule violator must be closely supervised by the rule enforcer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referees are involved in almost every kind of sport that is performed in a competitive manner. Unfortunately, many tasks of referees at times surpass the limited human capacity to process information. Accordingly, a number of systematic judgment errors in referee decisions have been identified in the corresponding literature. The social cognition approach to refereeing in sports by Plessner (2005) provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of these biases. Social cognition is the general study of how people make sense of other people and themselves on the basis of an information-processing framework. Among others, this approach provides insights into the processes that underlie biases in social judgments and, thus, some hints on how to prevent them. Based on this approach and more general work on skill acquisition, we develop a video training for soccer referees that aims at optimizing their decision-making skills. The idea of this training, its implementation, and first results will be presented and are open to discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a summary of the article `International Bias in Gymnastic Judging: Conscious or Unconscious Influences?' by D.M. Ste. Marie, found in `Perceptual and Motor Skills,' Volume 83.

Presents an abstract of the article `Sources and Intensity of Acute Stress in Adolescent and Adult Australian Basketball Referees: A Preliminary Study,' by A.N. Kaissidis and M.H. Anshel that appeared in `The Australian Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.'

Studies the magnitude of stress factors in volleyball and football officials at three different officiating level. Evaluation of responses using the Official's Stress Test.

The article presents a summary of a study entitled "Sport role socialization: Initial entry into the subculture of officiating," by D. M. Furst, originally published in a 1989 issue of the "Journal of Sport Behavior." The study found that most of the collegiate sport officials were men, first-born children, began officiating because of interest in sports, and were influenced mainly by coaches and peers in the decision to start officiating.

The article presents a summary of a study entitled "Accuracy and certainty judgments of umpires and nonumpires," by D. W. Rainey and colleagues, originally published in a 1989 issue of the "Journal of Sport Behavior." The study found no significant difference in accuracy of calls made by baseball umpires and nonumpires.

This article examines the hypothesis that there is a politically-inspired bias in the evaluation of competitors from "East" and "West" countries, by analyzing the judges for the World Figure Skating Championships. The findings do not support the hypothesis and the consistency of the judges' scoring is explained in terms of their professionalism.