Representação e manifestação da competência de ajuizamento em árbitros de andebol portugueses

Abstract

The referee, as the element that possesses the power of judging actions and matches behaviours, has the responsibility of being a person of great importance in a sporting event. Thus, the need of impartiality and coherent action with the rules of the matches are skills that are demanded from him, and it's important to know how a referee acts and thinks in the pitch. The aim of this study is to characterize and evaluate the performance manifestation in competition of the Portuguese Handball Referees. In this field two distinct but related studies were made. The first one, of exploratory character, involving 46 referees, tried to find out how the Portuguese Handball non elite referees understand and perceive their performance. The second one tried to measure the decision making error expression of the Portuguese Handball elite referees, in real context, 4 teams of referees participated and the purpose was to detect in competition the error expression in decision making. As far as instruments are concerned, in the first study a questionnaire was applied. The results show that referees believe that "being impartial" is the main characteristic to be competent, they also think that what is more difficult is judging "steps", "passive play" and "offensive foul". Referees consider "decisive games, previous bad experiences and competition importance" to be factors that may influence decision making. On the second study, 6 national first division matches were videotaped, referring to four elite referee teams, the interventions and omissions were counted, right or wrong for each considered situation. Results show that 76% Handball referees decisions were accurate. The results demonstrated a higher number of decision making errors by the referees in 9m faults sanction, advantage rule, 2 min, 7m and reposition throw.