Är det alltid rätt person som vinner? - DiVA

ABSTRACT
Rhythmic gymnastics is a sport where the results are decided by
judges in accordance with the regulations of the sport and the performance
of the gymnast. As in any other competitive sport the results in
Rhythmic gymnastics are of great importance and athletes in the sport
are putting in enormous time to reach their goals. The purpose of this
report was to look at the reliability and validity of the judgements in
this sport. The rule system in the sport has changed a lot during the
last years and in this report these changes, the reasons and the results
of the changes are studied. The focus is to study the implications the
rule system and the changes has on the reliability, i.e. the stability and
the consistency in the judgements and validity, i.e., the content, how
well the judgements measures the “right” things. The report is based
both on interviews and studies of the rules and regulations in the sport.
Eight structured individual one-hour interviews with four gymnasts,
two coaches and two judges in rhythmic gymnastics, all with long
experience of competitive rhythmic gymnastics, where made and the
rule system and the changes in the rules are studied from four rulebooks
(1983, 1989, 1993 and 1997). Discussions have also taken place
with a member of the European Gymnastic federation (E.U.G.). The
results of the study indicated that changes in the rule system has been
done both to improve the reliability and to improve the validity of the
judgements. Concerning the reliability it seems like the changes has
increased the reliability but concerning the validity the interviewed
persons reported that there still are some deficiency and that more
changes continuous should be done to improve the validity. One
specific problem in rhythmic gymnastics is also that the coaches and
judges a lot of time rather often are the same person, i.e. that coaches
judges their own athletes, and this fact rises the question about subjective
judging and how to prevent that.