Never blame the umpire – a review of Situation Awareness models and methods for examining the performance of officials in sport

Abstract

As sport becomes more complex, there is potential for ergonomics concepts to help enhance the performance of sports officials. The concept of Situation Awareness (SA) appears pertinent given the requirement for officials to understand what is going on in order to make decisions. Although numerous models exist, none have been applied to examine officials, and only several recent examples have been applied to sport. This paper examines SA models and methods to identify if any have applicability to officials in sport (OiS). Evaluation of the models and methods identified potential applications of individual, team and systems models of SA. The paper further demonstrates that the Distributed Situation Awareness model is suitable for studying officials in fastball sports. It is concluded that the study of SA represents a key area of multidisciplinary research for both ergonomics and sports science in the context of OiS. Practitioner Summary: Despite obvious synergies, applications of cognitive ergonomics concepts in sport are sparse. This is especially so for Officials in Sport (OiS). This article presents an evaluation of Situation Awareness models and methods, providing practitioners with guidance on which are the most suitable for OiS system design and evaluation.

Using a situation awareness approach to determine decision-making behaviour in squash

“…In an overview of different SA models Neville & Salmon (2016) suggest Klein's (1993) recognition-primed decision model (RPD) as the most appropriate for examining decision-making under time pressure in a naturalistic setting (for an overview see also Kermarrec & Bossard, 2014). This model is an alternative to the information-processing approach and utilises a naturalistic decision-making (NDM) framework which proposes that problem solvers under time pressure, assess real world situations by recognising familiar patterns that experience has shown to be useful.…”

Ergonomics issues in sport and outdoor recreation

“…Physical ergonomics research has examined issues ranging from sports equipment and clothing design (Lake 2000;McGhee et al 2013;Reilly and Lees 1984) to sports injury (Theberge 2012), and biomechanics (Lees et al 2000). Cognitive ergonomics research has focused on various cognitive issues associated with individuals and teams, ranging from decision-making (Macquet and Fleurance 2007) and cognition (McNeese et al 2015) to situation awareness (Macquet and Stanton 2014;Neville and Salmon 2016), teamwork (Salmon, Clacy, and Dallat 2017a) and coaching (Macquet, Ferrand, and Stanton 2015). More recently, systems ergonomics applications have begun to explore wider sports systems issues such as performance analysis (Mclean et al, forthcoming), injury causation and prevention (Clacy et al, forthcoming) and spectators and crowds (Filingeri et al 2017;Sun, May, and Wang 2016).…”

Seeing Officiating as a Sociotechnical System – The Case for Applying Distributed Situation Awareness to Officials in Sport

“…Described as 'externally driven consciousness,' [20] an ecological systems approach allows for the unit of analysis to move from what is going on in one's mind to the way human and non-human agents interact in the system. Within the systems perspective of SA, DSA has been identified as the most applicable concept to be applied to OiS [11].…”

“…Despite its popularity, systems thinking applications have not yet emerged in the sporting context. Sports systems, particularly OiS, are becoming more complex and technology dependent, exhibiting the characteristics of complex sociotechnical systems and represent a critical but neglected research area [11].…”

“…By focusing on OiS and technology use, a systems approach has the opportunity to both examine the design of existing systems and also explore the primary taksof OiSdecision making. Neville and Salmon [11] have identified that a systems approach to Situation Awareness, specifically the theory of Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) [16], has applicability to both the design of the OiS system as well as their primary role to make decisions. DSA purports that situation awareness (SA), or understanding of 'what is going on' [17] is held by the overall sociotechnical system comprising human (officials) and nonhuman agents (e.g.…”