Assessment of soccer referee proficiency in time-sensitive decision-making

Soccer is the world's most popular sport. The success of the sport is dependent on referees making correct calls and maintaining game integrity. Referee performance is determined by attributes: game flow understanding, fitness, and call decision making. Evaluating referee quality using these attributes is vital to improving on-field performance. MDCVSRP oversees all referees within Virginia. Because MDCVSRP has no program to assess junior referee fitness or game flow understanding, it is unable to identify high quality referees within its system. A program is needed to predict the call accuracy of all junior referees within MDCVSRP based on their Fitness and/or game flow understanding attributes. Four alternative programs were identified to assess the quality of junior referees within MDCVSRP: 1) Baseline Physical Fitness Tests assessing referee fitness attributes; 2) Game Flow Evaluations assessing game flow understanding attributes; 3) Combined Evaluations assessing both fitness and game flow understanding attributes; and 4) No Assessments conducted for fitness or game flow understanding (status quo). A two part analysis was conducted to determine the utility of each program. Part I used a discrete event simulator to quantify the effects of fitness and game flow understanding on call accuracy. Using this analysis, part II allocated utilities to each program based on attributes assessed. Analysis of part I concluded that call accuracy varies nonlinearly with both fitness and game flow understanding. Part II concluded that the Fitness Test (0.749) had the highest utility followed by Combined Evaluation (0.742), Game Flow Evaluation (0.727), and No Assessment (0.721). Based on a cost benefit analysis, it was determined that the benefit of implementing any program to assess the fitness and/or game flow understanding of junior referees is outweighed by cost. Therefore, it is recommended that No Assessments be conducted for fitness and/or game flow understanding on junior referees within MDCVSRP.