Abstract
The use of observational methodology in the sports context provides coaches and other sports professionals with flexible tools that adapt to their needs. In collective sports, the use of these instruments is common for the technical and tactical analysis of the game. Based on the importance of data quality in these instruments, the purpose was to design, validate, and test the reliability of a mixed observational instrument of field formats and category systems to analyze technical and tactical actions in the offense phase in soccer. The instrument collects information regarding the actions with the ball, moment of the play (start, development, and end), and contextual situation for the offensive team and for the goalkeeper. The instrument design, validation, and reliability calculation were done in four stages: (a) review of the literature, (b) design the first draft of the instrument, (c) experts’ qualitative and quantitative review of the instrument, and (d) observer training test (reliability calculation). The content validity was established by 12 experts (Ph.D. in sports science or soccer coach with at least of 10 years of coaching experience). The Delphi methodology was used. Experts did a quantitative (scale 0–10) and qualitative evaluation. Experts were asked about: (a) comprehension of the criteria, categorical cores, degree of openness, and their definitions, (b) pertinence of categorical cores and degree of openness, and (c) whether to include other categorical cores or degree of openness in the observation instrument. The lowest Aiken’s V index was 0.91 for the categorical core “numerical situation with opponent goalkeeper.” The inter- and intra-observer reliability presented good levels of agreement. The lowest Kappa index was 0.96 for the inter-reliability in the categorical core “defensive pressing lines” and was 0.98 for the intra-reliability in the categorical core “ball height (start of ball possession),” “distance of the defensive player,” “ball height (end of ball possession),” “numerical situation,” and “defensive pressing lines.” The coefficients of the generalizability analysis showed a high level of accuracy, validity and reliability of the instrument. The results show that the instrument allows to obtain objective, valid and reliable information about the offensive phase in soccer.
Highlights
The study of the actions done by the players and team is common in soccer (Carling et al, 2006)
In the design of the observational instrument, the categorical cores and degree of openness were selected using the categorical cores and degree of openness proposed by Moreno (2005), Sainz de Baranda et al (2005), Anguera et al (2011), García-López et al (2013), FIGURE 1 | Division of the field used to establish the zone from which the ball was sent
In the second and third design, the results of the Generalizability coefficient (GC) are equal to or very close to 0, these results indicate a high adjustment of the observation instrument and that its categories were exhaustive and mutually exclusive (E/ME) (Anguera and Hernández-Mendo, 2013)
Summary
The study of the actions done by the players and team (i.e., match analysis) is common in soccer (Carling et al, 2006). The analysis of game has focused on finding patterns in the game or performance indicators (Hughes, 2003; Dufour et al, 2017) For this purpose, the observational methodology is used to collect information in team sports, as it allows for the collection of multiple variables that interact in the sporting context (Anguera, 2003; Anguera and HernándezMendo, 2015; Fabra et al, 2018; Maneiro et al, 2018; Nadal et al, 2018). The current development of football requires that coaches, researchers and performance analysts use instruments that brings together all aspects of the game These instruments are required to integrate the technical actions of the outfield players, and to analyze aspects such as the influence of the goalkeeper on the offensive game, the numerical situations that occur and the incidence of the outfield area on the technical–tactical actions that occur
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