The role of perspective in refereeing: Insights from a video-based decision-making experiment

ABSTRACT

Decision accuracy is a crucial factor in the evaluation of refereeing performance. In sports research, officials’ decision-making is frequently assessed outside real games through video-based decision experiments, where they evaluate recorded game situations from a third-person perspective. This study examines whether the inclusion of the first-person perspective influences decision accuracy and certainty. Twenty-four professional officials from the first and second German basketball leagues participated in the study. The officials assessed 50 game situations from both first-person and third-person perspectives, indicating their decisions and certainty levels. The statistical analysis utilises signal detection theory to evaluate the efficacy of the first-person perspective compared to the third-person perspective in identifying rule violations and no-calls in video recordings. The findings indicate that the first-person perspective does not yield superior accuracy in identifying foul calls. However, scenes from the first-person perspective exhibit a significant 9% increase in correctly identifying no-calls. Furthermore, officials report significantly higher levels of decision certainty and comfort when using the first-person perspective. The study suggests that sports officials may benefit from incorporating additional scenes from the first-person perspective into video-based decision training. Future studies should explore whether this additional perspective improves the training effect and translates into enhanced in-game performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Error minimisation
• first-person perspective
• eye-tracking
• video-based decisions
• performance evaluation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data sets used in this study will be publicly available after publication on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/tsuqd/) Doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/TSUQD.

Notes

¹ The supplementary factor introduced in the preregistration, namely the “inclusion of gaze point” for the first-person recordings, has been omitted from this manuscript. This decision was based on the understanding that professional referees, as the study’s participants, are unlikely to derive significant benefits from another professional referee’s gaze point, given their existing familiarity with the most relevant areas. This rationale aligns with non-significant results observed. Consequently, we propose that this parameter be considered in a training study involving amateur referees, as they are more likely to benefit from the insights provided by a more experienced referee’s gaze point.

Additional information

Funding

The video footage used in this study was obtained from a project that received funding from the Federal Institute of Sport Science (Bundesinstitut für Sportwissenschaft; 2521BI1006).