Previous studies have compared visual skills of expert and novice athletes; referees' performance has not been addressed. Visual skills of two groups of expert referees, successful and unsuccessful in decision making, were compared. Using video clips of soccer matches to assess decision-making success of 41 national and international referees from 31 to 42 years of age, 10 top referees were sel...

BACKGROUND Injury among soccer referees is rarely studied, especially with regard to differences in the quality level of the refereeing. Additionally, we have found no study that has reported injury occurrence during official physical fitness testing for soccer referees. The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency, type and consequences of match-related and fitness-testing related in...

PURPOSE To perform an exploratory characterization of repeated sprint sequences (RSS) and repeated acceleration sequences (RAS) in top level soccer referees. METHODS 7 field and 7 assistant referees were monitored during 2007 America's Soccer Cup with GPS technology. Sprints of >18 km·h(-1) and accelerations of >1.5 m·s(-2) were considered as high intensity activities. RSS and RAS were define...

The influence of competition level on referees’ decision making was investigated. Referees’ decisions in 90 handball games (30 games X 3 competition levels) were observed in different situations related to the advantage rule, and 100 referees from two different level of expertise were subsequently asked to offer explanations for the competition-level effects from the first part of the study. Re...

The influence of player gender on referees’ decision making was experimentally investigated. In Experiment 1, including 145 male handball referees, we investigated (a) the influence of referees’ level of expertise on their decisional biases against women and (b) the referees’ gender stereotypes. Results revealed that biases against women were powerful regardless of the referees’ level of expert...

Editor THEORIA. (2023). Referees for THEORIA (2021-2022). An International Journal Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 38(1), 131–132. https://doi.org/10.1387/theoria.24928