Bias in Judging Women's Gymnastics Induced by Expectations of Within-Team Order

Abstract

The score a gymnast receives for perfoming a gymnastic routine may be influenced by factors other than the quality of the performance. Since gymnastics coaches typically place their gymnastics in rank order from poorest to best for competition in each event, judges may expect that the quality of the gymnastics routines will improve within a team order. This study was conducted to determine if gymnasts are at a scoring disadvantage if they appear first within their team order of competition or at a scoring advantage if they appear last. Ten nationally or regionally certified female gymnastics judges were selected from three locations in the United States and asked to score the routines of the 1977 Region VI AIAW Championships on each of two sets of videotapes, edited from the original tapes, in two judging sessions separated by 48 hours. For the first judging session 20 gymnasts appeared in the first position for their teams and 20 gymnasts appeared in the fifth position for their teams. For the second session the first and fifth gymnasts for each of the teams were reversed in the videotapes, which made it possible to collect scores for 40 gymnasts who were judged in both the first and fifth positions for their teams. Results of a 2 × 10 × 2 ANOVA revealed that female gymnasts were scored significantly (p < .05) higher if they appeared in the fifth position for their team than if they appeared in the first position.