| MuayThai
is a combat sport with a growing international profile but limited
research conducted into judging practices and processes. Problems
with judging of other subjectively judged combat sports have caused
controversy at major international tournaments that have resulted
in changes to scoring methods. Nationalistic bias has been central
to these problems and has been identified across a range of sports.
The aim of this study was to examine nationalistic bias in MuayThai.
Data were collected from the International Federation of MuayThai
Amateur (IFMA) World Championships held in Almaty, Kazakhstan September
2003 and comprised of tournament results from 70 A-class MuayThai
bouts each judged by between five and nine judges. Bouts examined
featured 62 competitors from 21 countries and 25 judges from 11 countries.
Results suggested that nationalistic bias was evident. The bias observed
equated to approximately one round difference between opposing judges
over the course of a bout (a mean of 1.09 (SE=0.50) points difference
between judges with opposing affilations). The number of neutral judges
used meant that this level of bias generally did not influence the
outcome of bouts. Future research should explore other ingroup biases,
such as nearest neighbour bias and political bias as well as investigating
the feasibility adopting an electronic scoring system.
KEY
WORDS: MuayThai, judging, nationalistic bias.
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