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Är det alltid rätt person som vinner? - DiVA

Är det alltid rätt person som vinner? - DiVA

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SUMMARY<br />

Background and purpose<br />

In the field of sports the results are of great importance. The results are<br />

the essence in competitive sports, and success or failure can change<br />

life overnight for elite athletes. Many times the difference between<br />

winning and loosing can be very marginal, looking at the time or<br />

points difference but still the result will have a big impact. To finish<br />

second, even if it's an Olympic game, can be felt like a failure for the<br />

athlete. Following citation shows an example of this through the<br />

feelings of the rhythmical gymnast, Oksana Skaldina, during the 1992<br />

Olympics:<br />

Winning the bronze medal instead of the gold seemed like a catastrophe<br />

to me, a collapse of all my hopes and planes. (Catalano, R. 1999).<br />

In the light of this the quality of the measurements and the judgements<br />

in sports are an extremely important issue. What does these results<br />

really stand for? What is measured and judged and how good are those<br />

measurements and judgements? From a scientific perspective, evaluation<br />

of measurements is often <strong>det</strong>ermined by reliability and validity.<br />

Reliability as the consistency, and stability in the measurement, and<br />

validity as how relevant the measurement is. With the big importance<br />

of the results in competitive sports today it’s both important and<br />

interesting to look at the reliability and validity of the measurements<br />

and judgements in sports. The reliability problem is often seen and<br />

discussed in so called judging sports, sports where judges are deciding<br />

the outcome of the competition. Reliability in judging sports means<br />

that the different judges come up with exactly the same results independent<br />

from the other judges. The reliability depends partly on the<br />

ability of the judge to interpret the rules and, partly on the ability to<br />

make correct judgements based on these rules. In sports, where<br />

different judges are judging one performance, there are often rules for<br />

how much the points from the different judges are allowed to differ,<br />

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