Self-efficacy of sports officials: a critical review of the literature.

Lirgg, Cathy D. ; Feltz, Deborah L. ; Merrie, Michael D. 等

Referee, official, ump, side judge, line judge, blue. Whatever the term used, a necessary participant in sport competition is the one who makes the important decisions concerning the direction of the game. The pitcher throws the ball, the umpire calls strike or foul; the tennis player serves, the line judge signals in or out. The pitcher and the tennis player are doing their best to be successful; the umpire and line judge are doing their best to be correct. On a close call, coaches and fans rarely yell at the player for being imperfect. However, sport officials are held to a higher standard--fairly or unfairly, they are seen as influencing the game, often to a greater extent than the players. In fact, an official's error can essentially turn a game.

The mindset of a sport official is, by nature, different from the mindset of the athlete playing the game. Even though many former athletes join the coaching ranks, rarely do you find a professional athlete taking on officiating after his or her playing days are over. Although both the player and official need to be focused on the play at present, the athlete must be concerned about process while the sport official is focused solely on outcome, that is, his or her call. MacMahon, Helson, Starkes, and Weston (2007) found that the roles of players and referee lead to differing decision-making skills. Both skill sets involve awareness, anticipation, positioning, and decision-making. However, ultimately, the athlete will need to rely on a physical performance to make the play. The official, on the other hand, will need to rely on not only his or her eyesight but also on other senses to instantaneously make a decision.

It takes years of practice to be a good sport official. Similar to an athlete's abilities, officiating skill takes time to develop. Beginning sport officials may referee youth sport or recreational games. As abilities improve, they may be given the chance to officiate high school or even college events. Officials in professional or international sports must also climb slowly through the ranks, with their performances being highly scrutinized as they go (BBC Sport, 2013). At each successive level, as the games get faster and more complex and the athletes' skill levels increase as well, the officiating is expected to reflect an increase in skill also. What may be tolerated in a junior high school or primary school contest in terms of performance (both by players and officials) is not acceptable at higher levels. One only needs to look to the incidents of replacement players in 1987 and replacement referees in 2012 in professional American football to note the level of frustration for fans and, in the case of replacement referees, players, coaches, and fans. Even so, officiating at any level seems to be held to a higher standard than is player performance.

Wolfson and Neave (2007) reported that the entire sample of soccer referees in their study rated "love of soccer" as their highest reason for choosing to be a referee. However, because sport officials are held to such high scrutiny, individuals who choose to engage in this experience should possess something even stronger: they must trust in their abilities to "get it right." Furthermore, good sport officials need to "sell" their calls, even if they do not feel confident about them (MacMahon & Plessner, 2008). The importance of having confidence in one's ability in the sporting arena is certainly not restricted to athletes.

Although sport officials can find some information about the importance of psychological skills in their jobs (e.g. Balberman,2013; Litchfield, 2008; Weinberg & Richardson, 1990), the majority of confidence research in sport has focused on the self-efficacy of the athlete and, to a lesser extent, the coach (Feltz, Short, & Sullivan, 2008)). Self-efficacy refers to people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action to produce specific outcomes (Bandura, 1977). Self-efficacy is not simply one's perceptions of one's amount of personal skills, but is a judgment of one's ability to use the skills one possesses at a specific point in time to produce a certain outcome. While confidence is viewed as a global construct, self-efficacy is situation-specific. Efficacy perceptions are influenced by past experience, verbal persuasion, vicarious and imaginal experiences, and physiological and affective states (Bandura, 1986, Dithurbide & Feltz, 2012). Further, self-efficacy is considered a common cognitive mechanism that mediates behavior. It is posited to directly affect behavior in terms of motivation (e.g., persistence, effort, choice of activities), emotions (e.g., arousal and anxiety), and cognitions (e.g., decision-making). Those behaviors, then, will influence actual performance outcomes. Bandura (1994) notes that a strong sense of efficacy is created most effectively through mastery experiences. Success build it, failure undermines it, especially if an initial sense of efficacy is not firmly established.

Initial Conceptualizations of Referee Self-efficacy

While referees have been the focus of a limited amount of research in sport, research on official's self-efficacy is sparse. Following Bandura's conceptualization of self-efficacy that specified sources and outcomes of efficacy, Guillen and Feltz (2011) were the first to propose a conceptual framework for referee efficacy. Similar to Bandura's original sources of efficacy, they proposed four sources: mastery experiences, verbal persuasion (feedback from significant others), physiological and emotional states (arousal regulation, conditioning), and partner qualifications. Using focus groups of soccer referees as participants, they determined six dimensions for officiating success: (a) Game Knowledge --adequate knowledge of their sport and rules, (b) Strategic Skills--making the right interpretations of the game and rules, (c) Decision-Making Skills--speed and accuracy, (d) Psychological Skills--focus attention and concentration, (e) Communication/Control of Game--ability to communicate with those involved in the game and game situations, and (f) Physical Fitness. Outcomes hypothesized were that highly efficacious referees should be faster and more accurate in their decisions, have fewer athlete rule violations, be more physically fit, have lower referee stress, and have higher satisfaction reports from coaches, athletes, and other officials.

A year later, Myers, Feltz, Guillen, and Dithurbide (2012) created the Referee Self-Efficacy Scale following Guillen and Feltz's (2011) suggestions. Using structural equation modeling, they were able to validate a 13-item, four-factor scale: Game Knowledge (confidence in knowledge of the sport), Decision-making (confidence to make decisions), Pressure (confidence to be uninfluenced by pressure), and Communication (confidence to communicate effectively). Their validation studies employed youth sport to professional sport officials from five team sports (basketball, volleyball, soccer, roller hockey, and football). The majority of sport officials were male, although sport officials from both male and female contests were included. The inclusion of officials from a variety of sports was intentionally different from the all-soccer referees used in the Guillen and Feltz (2011) focus groups. These two studies are important first steps in our understanding of determining the impact of self-efficacy beliefs on sport officials. Because little investigative work has been done using these models, this paper will take these papers as starting points and suggest future areas of consideration.

Additional Dimension. One of the most important points about self-efficacy is that it is situation-specific (Bandura, 1977). The dimensions suggested by Guillen and Feltz (2011) and Myers et al. (2012) certainly follow that viewpoint. Flowever, as both articles note, a one-size-fits-all conceptualization of self-efficacy for officials of all sports may not be possible. The work of Myers and colleagues shows that their scale can be useful for a sport other than soccer. Regardless of the sport, all officials rely on their game knowledge and decision-making skills; they all must communicate with players, coaches, and other sport officials, and they all are under some degree of pressure as well. Yet, as similar as those skills are among sport officials, each sport presents a different set of challenges. The volleyball official, for example, is fairly stationary. Baseball umpires are required to move somewhat, especially at lower levels of the game where there are not four umpires working together. There are more football referees involved in a game than any other sport, but they often have to dodge large bodies while officiating their respective areas of the field. Soccer and basketball referees must physically keep up with action that is developing at a faster pace and greater distance than most sports. While Guillen and Feltz (2011) included physical fitness as one of their dimensions, fitness was not included in the Referee Self-efficacy Scale (Myer et al., 2012). Examining the requirements for different sports, fitness may actually not have been a useful dimension. A more appropriate dimension might be one that reflects the official's confidence in getting to the proper position to make the call. Sport officials have to be able to see clearly from an advantageous angle to optimize making the right call (Plessner & MacMahon, 2013). With the possible exception of volleyball, officials of all team sports should find this challenging. Therefore, inclusion of a dimension that reflects proper positioning may be important.

Sources of Efficacy Information

Myers et al. (2012) also investigated the proposed sources of referee self-efficacy, using years of referee experience, highest level refereed, and factors from the Sources of Sport Confidence Questionnaire (SSCQ; Vealey, Hayashi, Gamer-Holman, & Giacobbi, 1998). SSCQ dimensions included mastery experiences, vicarious experience (not mentioned in Guillen and Feltz, but consistent with self-efficacy theory), support from significant others, physical and mental preparation, and environmental comfort/situational favorableness (as an indicator of partner qualifications). Myers et al. hypothesized that mastery experiences (e.g., years of referee experience, highest level refereed) would be the strongest source of referee self-efficacy information based on Guillen and Feltz' model.

Their results supported their hypothesis. Years of referee experience had a statistically significant direct effect on each dimension of referee self-efficacy and highest level refereed had a statistically significant direct effect on both game knowledge efficacy and decision-making efficacy. However, physical/mental preparation also had a statistically significant direct effect on each dimension of referee self-efficacy. In addition, environmental comfort had a statistically significant direct effect on both pressure efficacy and communication efficacy. As Myers et al. (2012) noted, the results are not surprising given that one's mastery experiences and sense of readiness are considered within self-efficacy theory as the most dependable for forming efficacy judgments. In terms of environmental comfort (e.g., the venue), the authors reasoned that a venue where sports officials feel more comfortable (perhaps spectators are further from the playing field/court, or crowds that have a reputation of being more respectable) allows them to focus more on their job, feel less pressure from spectators, and have more confidence to approach coaches and players to communicate with them.

Two particular sources that were not significant predictors of referee self-efficacy were social support and situational favorableness. This may be the result of the items used to assess these factors. For social support, the items were "get positive feedback from other officials," "am encouraged by other officials," "get positive feedback from evaluators of my officiating," "receive support and encouragement from other officials," and "know I have support from others who are important to me." Except for the last item, sports officials may not get much support from their fellow colleagues. This might be an important area for referee associations to consider, especially if turnover and burnout is an issue within the profession. Similarly for situational favorableness, which includes familiarity with and qualifications of co-officials, administrators of sports officials may try to find better ways of matching up officials that would give them more control over who they have on their referee team for a particular game.

Additional Sources of Self-efficacy . Several areas of feedback potential may impact official's sense of efficacy. The increased usage of replay in a greater number of college and professional sports certainly affords an opportunity, in a very public manner, to either corroborate or refute calls made by officials. Although it should be assumed that officials at these levels have fairly established high levels of efficacy, discouragement stemming from frequent reversals may occur. Research should look into both the possible lowering of efficacy from these situations as well as the enhancement of efficacy that may occur by the frequent vindication of an official's call. Use of instant replay at lower sporting levels (e.g., high school) for officiating purposes may be very detrimental because officials at these levels may have more disputed calls incorrect than correct. Private use of replay for teaching purposes would be beneficial, rather than the use of replay to overrule officials during games at these levels.

Another avenue for feedback could be opportunities to referee an important event. It is possible that invitations or rejections for officiating championship sporting events such as the Super Bowl or even a high school state championship could impact one's efficacy. In an extreme example, a high school football official once attempted suicide after being pulled off a state championship officiating team for a botched call that had earlier cost a school the game (Reilly, 2013). The initial invitation had meant everything to him and his sense of efficacy obviously collapsed with the negative feedback.

Outcomes of Self-efficacy

The goal of Myers et al. (2012) was to develop and validate a scale that measures self-efficacy in referees. Their focus was on the items that defined the dimensions proposed and their psychometric properties. As they also note, outcomes of self-efficacy were not part of the model. Going back to the Guillen and Feltz (2011) conceptual model, several outcomes were suggested, among them being speed and accuracy of decisions, lower stress levels, less rule-breaking behavior from athletes, greater satisfaction from others based on the official's performance, and greater commitment to the profession. However, only a very small part of the Guillen and Feltz paper dealt with those outcomes.

Generally, in sport research, self-efficacy is studied as a predictor of performance. Athletes' performances are usually very objective--percentage of shots made, batting average, number of shots on goal defended, etc. Although some studies in sport have investigated effects of self-efficacy on athletes' decision-making accuracy (e.g., Hepler & Feltz, 2012) and anxiety (e.g., Haney & Long, 1995), most have ignored these cognitive and emotional processes that are mediated by self-efficacy What is it about an official's performance that would be important to predict? One could argue that officials with high self-efficacy would make more correct decisions as a result of high self-efficacy. Additionally, using the referee outcomes listed previously, self-efficacy also would influence sport official stress or anxiety. From research on anxiety in athletes, it is believed that lower anxiety allows one to focus on relevant cues with less distraction (Easterbrook, 1959). It would follow, then, that sports officials who are high in self-efficacy would be able to respond quicker and more accurately because anxiety is lower. The bottom line for sport officials in terms of performance would be to make the correct call in a timely, and consistent, manner. High self-efficacy that leads to low anxiety levels would certainly help in this respect.

Taken a step further, if sports officials are correct and do not miss calls, it would follow that athletes would tend to play within the rules of the game more often. And, if calls are correct, then it would also follow that athletes, coaches, and fellow officials would rate performances higher than if the calls were suspect. Adhering to the reciprocal nature of self-efficacy and performance (Bandura, 1977), positive reviews from others should then raise the future efficacy level of the official. In effect, this outcome of one's self-efficacy would become the source for one's future self-efficacy.

However, this argument may not be as simple, or as desirable, for sport officials as it seems. For an athlete, performance is objective. The athlete knows how many times he strikes out or if she scores a goal and so does everyone else who is watching. Performances are, by necessity, measured quantitatively. For the sport official, the rightness or wrongness of the call often times is in the eyes of the beholder (i.e., coach, athlete, fan). Sports on television may afford the luxury of knowing if a call is correct, but the majority of officials' calls go unchecked. So even if the sport official made correct calls most of the time, the immediate feedback they get from coaches, athletes, and fans is no more than the perception of their performance. Officials in upper level sports, such as college or professional, are evaluated by trained observers and their feedback is more reliable. The effect of receiving immediate feedback, while hard to ignore, may not be a credible source upon which to base one's future self-efficacy, especially if the feedback one is getting is negative.

Guillen and Feltz (2011) also proposed that sports officials with higher self-efficacy levels would be more committed to their profession. The extent to which sports officials are committed to the organization, its goals and values, and its processes is important to reducing turnover. The relationship between self-efficacy and professional commitment has been minimally investigated in coaching efficacy (e.g., Kent & Sullivan, 2003) and shown to be positively correlated. A promising model to use to investigate professional commitment among sports officials is the Sport Commitment Model (Scanlan, Simons, Carpenter, Schmidt, & Keeler, 1993). Although it was originally developed for the youth sports domain, it has been adapted for coaching commitment (e.g., Raedeke, 2004; Raedeke, Granzyk, & Warren, 2000). Raedeke and his colleagues found that coaches who were committed out of attraction to coaching (versus staying in coaching because of feeling entrapped) perceived more benefits to coaching, were more satisfied, and reported fewer attractive alternatives. This model could hold promise for investigating referee commitment as an outcome of self-efficacy beliefs.

The opposite side of professional commitment is referee burnout. A high sense of one's referee self-efficacy may have an insulating effect against the large number of stressors that have been associated with the sports officiating profession. A number of burnout measurement scales could be modified to assess burnout in relation to self-efficacy among sports officials.

Sport-specific. As stated earlier, the expectations of sport officials from different sports may make the usefulness of one model of sport officiating efficacy difficult. The above sections highlight similar responsibilities that should impact all sport officials and the Meyers et al. (2012) model is certainly a good starting point in terms of understanding the self-efficacy of sport officials. However, when using a scale for research purposes (i.e., to correlate efficacy to performance), the scale probably should be adapted somewhat to be sport-specific, while keeping the dimensions of the model intact, to be consistent with self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977).

Overconfidence. An area that has received a small amount of attention in sport is the situation of an overconfident athlete. Although overestimating one's self-efficacy in a physical performance could result in personal harm (Bandura, 1997) or losing a match due to under-estimation of the opponent coupled with under-preparation (Weinberg & Gould,2011; Feltz & Wood, 2009), would an official who is overconfident be less effective? Overconfidence is defined simply as believing you can do more than the ability you possess (Weinberg & Gould, 2011). For physical performances, this definition is useful. But how would one characterize an overconfident official? Because the sport official's "performance" is making judgments, perhaps an overconfident official may believe he or she is infallible, that is, always correct (a situation not likely to occur). There may be positive outcomes for a sport official having "overconfidence." That official may appear very much in control and assertive, which are important attributes. While his or her performance in a game may not be affected, it is possible that an overly confident official may shrug off criticism, both from coaches and superiors. Would she appear aloof to players, coaches, or other officials? Would he be quicker to eject a player? This attitude may limit the ability to improve or interfere with professional development. Although overconfidence by an official is an interesting situation, it would be extremely difficult to research quantitatively. One could, however, use video clips of officiating situations, much like Flepler and Feltz (2012) used with athletes in basketball, and get pre-test self-efficacy ratings to see how they compare with decision-making under contrived pressure situations. Hepler and Feltz found that athletes with higher self-efficacy beliefs took the first decision option more frequently than those with low self-efficacy. Athletes with high efficacy beliefs just trusted their first options and did not feel a need to ponder alternative ones.

Conclusions

Sport officiating has been somewhat ignored by researchers in the athletic arena. In particular, sport psychology research has focused mainly on the athlete and very little on the sport official. However, many of the issues that athletes encounter are also issues that sport officials face. This paper expanded on the seminal work of Guillen and Feltz (2011) and Meyers et al. (2012) to advance our understanding of sport officials' self-efficacy. While the Meyers et al. model is a good starting point, we suggest that a dimension that reflects getting into the proper position be added. Because the original model did not include outcomes of self-efficacy, this section is also a ripe area for future research. Other areas of research that we suggest exploring are how self-efficacy affects sport official burnout and commitment to the profession (possibly incorporating the Sport Commitment Model), and the impact of overconfidence.

The usefulness of any model is measured by the scale that accompanies it. More testing using sport officials from different sports will be necessary to determine if its properties are global in nature. The initial work of Meyers et al. (2012) seems to support its usefulness across different sports. However, their sample contained only five sports and very few female officials. A wider variety of sport officials should be utilized. Although gender differences in self-efficacy have been widely researched in sport and physical activity, gender differences in the self-efficacy of officials has not been studied. We also suggest specifically targeting officials who are officiating opposite gender competitions (both men officiating women and women officiating men). In addition, comparing efficacy levels of officials at different levels of competition, both male and female, may yield interesting results.

Sport officials are an important part of competitions. A significant amount of tune is spent on helping athletes improve perfonnance. Because of the crucial role they play, sport officials should also be given every opportunity to improve their work. Although sport officials practice the mechanics of their sport, focusing on the mental aspects of their jobs should enhance their performance as it does the athlete. While acknowledging that other factors such as pre-existing expectancies (MacMahon & Mildenhall, 2012) and contextual influences (MacMahon & Starkes, 2008) contribute to sport officials' decisions, understanding the influence of self-efficacy within the unique responsibilities of sport officials is an important contribution to the limited but growing research on these individuals. In closing, research on sport officials is a promising, as well as important, area for future research.

Cathy D. Lirgg

University of Arkansas

Deborah L. Feltz

Michigan State University

Michael D. Merrie

University of Arkansas

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Address correspondence to: Dr. Cathy D. Lirgg, Associate Professor. 308N HPER Bldg. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701. Email: clirgg@uark.edu