Rasch Calibration of Perceived Weights of Different Sports Games

In many countries, an athlete’s performance at sporting competitions is often used as part of the selection criteria for entry into college. These criteria could be biased depending upon the procedures utilized by the authorities in a particular country. The purpose of this study was to calibrate, by using the Rasch rating scale model, the judge-based weights associated with the different quality of games. The participants (N = 202) were asked to weight the quality of the gold medal of 10 sports games using a scale ranging from 1 to 100. In this study the judges’ weights on the quality of the games differed among the sports games. The Olympic Games had the highest quality measure (logit = 7.69) whereas the National Sport Games had the lowest quality measure (logit = –3.73). The severity level (i.e., a tendency of a judge to rate higher or lower than other judges) was also different among judges, ranging from –6.73 (less severe) to 3.82 (more severe) logits. The results from a Rasch model analysis make it possible for a college board to identify the relative quality of games and to select from high school athletes more objectively.