Basketball officials\u27 training and development: links to retention

The sharp decline in retention from year-to-year among sport officials is considered a “crisis” among the officiating community and research has attempted to explore the issue by identifying factors that impact retention (Warner et al. 2013). The seven-factor “Referee Retention Scale” (RRS) seeks to predict the likelihood of retention for officials one factor being officials’ ratings of their continuing education (Ridinger et al. 2017). However there is a lack of study for examining the relationships among methods and outcomes of training continuing education and referee retention across sporting contexts. A cross-sectional design was created using an online survey which combined officials’ training methods and outcomes the RRS and a retention likelihood scale (Jaros 1997). Hypotheses stated that all training outcomes and methods would each hold statistically significant positive correlations with officials’ ratings of continuing education and the RRS would be a statistically significant predictor of retention likelihood. Data analysis of the responses revealed statistically significant correlations between continuing education ratings and the frequency of each training method as well as frequency of each training outcome. In relationships with continuing education ratings video analysis was the highest correlated method (r = 0.40 p = 0.000) while confidence development was the highest correlated outcome (r = 0.46 p = 0.000). The RRS regression analysis predicting retention likelihood recorded an R2 value of 0.21 (p = 0.000). Continuing education was not a statistically significant factor in this study but remains an important construct toward retention. Through assorted methods and outcomes associations may increase the likelihood of training satisfaction among their officials while also utilizing the RRS as a tool to evaluate performance in factors relating to retention. Research that further explores relationships between training methods and outcomes of interest is highly recommended including within sub-populations of officials