A review of comparative studies on rhytmic gymnastics judging

Introduction

Rhythmic Gymnastics is an aesthetic event balancing between art and sport. It is practiced exclusively by women and performed to music while using small hand apparatus - rope, hoop, ball, clubs, and ribbon. At the world class level the difficulty of body movements performed in combination with skilful handling of the apparatus is fascinating. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) is the world’s governing body for the sport, with its Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Committee, giving requirements for its development (Code of Points, Rules, and Regulations etc). Every active participant in sport, either as a competitor, a judge or a spectator is faced with evaluation problems. Much has been said and written about bias in sports officiating. The effects of biased officiating are potentially the most dramatic in sports in which the officials actually score the points through judging the performances of athletes with some combination of objective and subjective criteria, rhythmic gymnastics (RG) included. The basic aim of this study is the evaluation of judging objectivity in RG. The particular purpose of this study is to determine whether the rhythmic gymnastics judges showed a pattern of bias at the highest international level of competitions. Two kinds of bias patterns were considered: (1) The bias in favor of the rhythmic gymnasts from judges’ own countries (2) The bias against rhythmic gymnasts from countries in close competition.

Methods

This comparative review includes some of the previous scientific research studies, refer to the World Championships held in Sarajevo-’89/Athens-’91/Vienna-’95/Budapest-’96, and Budapest-‘03. For the last World Championships all the judging assignments were obtained for the Individual All-around, and Group Routines competition. To determine whether rhythmic gymnastics judges were biased in favor of gymnasts (teams) from their own countries, and against gymnasts (teams) from countries in close competition with their own, the scores of each individual judge (FED) were compared to the average of the remaining (3 or 4) judges on the panels (PAN) A, and B, and to the official mark (AVG). It was hypothesized that each judge, if biased, would score gymnasts (teams) from his own country higher than the average of the other (3 or 4) judges on the panel, and that each judge would score gymnasts (teams) from the closest two countries in the competition lower than the average of the remaining judges on the same panel. For this study it was assumed that a score for a gymnasts based on the mean of 3 (or 4) judges would be more valid indication of a rhythmic gymnasts performance than a score recorded by a single judge whose country is directly or indirectly involved. Finding a pattern where judges consistently differ from the average of the other 3 (or 4) judges would confirm the existence of the international bias.

Results

The obtained results were processed with Sign-test analysis (test of proportion) and with the Method of differences (t-test) across all events in Individual All-Around, and Group Exercise competition.
Discussion / Conclusions
This study reveals the evidence, which confirms the existence of the international bias in RG judging. International gymnastics judges over-score competitors (and teams) from their own countries. The analyses in which comparisons were made between scores of individual rhythmic judges (FED) versus Panel when judges scored gymnasts (teams) from countries ranking just above their own, as well as from countries, which were just below their own, do not confirm this pattern of bias in a considerable proportion. The existence of the international bias discovered in this study (even if is not statistically significant on conventional level of p=0.05) could be damaging to the credibility of rhythmic gymnastics as a competitive sport. To improve the situation, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) is currently testing the feasibility of using five judges at all Panels per event in major international competitions, with the gymnast’s scores being the average of the middle three judge’s scores. If such panels of five could be selected with an appropriate international mixture of judges to produce truly neutral panels, then the data from this study strongly support such a change as one way to potentially reduce the negative effects of international bias.

References

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