Coordinated gaze behaviour of handball referees: a practical exploration with focus on the methodical implementation

    Publication: Contribution to journalJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    Though the interaction of team members in sport has already been considered when analysing team
    expertise and performance, there is no comparable research addressing the interplay of referee teams as part of
    their expertise. Based on lab-based research on coordinated gaze behaviour, we assumed that orchestrating
    referees’ gaze is an important way of improving referee performances. To first scrutinize if handball referees
    coordinate their gaze, the gaze fixations of a handball referee team was analysed while they were presiding over a
    game. Results showed that referees mostly fixated the same aspects of game action (75%) and behaved
    differently as stated in existing guidelines for refereeing in handball. That is, the current results indicate that
    handball referees’ coordination of gaze behaviour seems far from optimal (they focused on the same aspects of
    game action too often) and should be considered when thinking about avenues to performance improvement.
    Furthermore, we tried to discuss potentials and limitations of the current research approach for future studies
    that seem necessary to gain more insight into the expertise interplay of referees.
    Original languageGerman
    JournalMovement & Sport Sciences – Science & Motricité
    Issue number102
    Pages (from-to)71-79
    Number of pages9
    ISSN2118-5735
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2019

    Citation