Differences in refereeing by foreign judges and judges who do not have "fellow athletes" in dance sport

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PhD, Associate Professor N.F. Singina
Russian State University of Physical Education, Sport, Youth and Tourism (SCOLIPE), Moscow

Objective of the study was to identify reference groups of judges to study the influence of various factors on the objectivity of refereeing in dance sports.
Methods and structure of the study. We analyzed the judicial protocols of ¼ and ½ finals of the dancesport competition "Dance Open International Festival "Dance Stories" hosted in Russia in 2019. We separated the dance pairs who did not have coaches or judges from the same club among the judging board ("Strangers" group) from the rest of the athletes ("Fellows" group). Based on these data, the following parameters were determined: 1) squared multiple correlation between the points given by the examined group of judges and those given by other judges (R2 coefficient), and 2) ratio of the number of crosses given to the "fellow" pairs to the number of crosses given to "strangers", designated as a "fellow/stranger" coefficient.
Study results and conclusions. When comparing the refereeing process by the foreign judges (Control Group) and the group of local judges, who do not have any "fellow" athletes from the hometown, no statistically significant differences were found between the "fellow/stranger" coefficients in the studied groups neither in the ¼ nor in the ½ finals.
Judges, who do not have their hometown or club pairs, judge the dancesport competitions objectively and along with foreign judges can be deemed a reference group when analyzing the competitions.

Keywords: dance sport, refereeing, favoritism, analysis of objectivity, mathematical methods, reliability.

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