Taekwondo Kyorugi Players’ Perceptions of Referees’ Judgements: Text-Mining Analysis

Abstract

This study aimed to explore athletes’ perceptions of referees’ judgements in taekwondo competitions using text mining analysis. Participants comprised 100 taekwondo athletes taking part in the World Taekwondo Championships. A total of 898 pieces of identified keywords data were collected on the perceptions of refereeing judgments. The stability and reliability of the referees’ judgments were also examined quantitatively. SPSS, KrKwic, and Netminer 4.0 were used to process the data, and descriptive statistics, covariance matrix, and centrality analysis were performed. The study revealed that the overall perception of the referees’ judgments, including the head referee’s gam-jeom declarations and the assistant referee’s punch points, centered on “unfairness” and “inconsistency,” confirming that taekwondo competitors perceived referees’ judgments as unfair. In particular, ‘gam-jeom_declared’ was perceived as unfair, and other situations such as ‘punch_points,’ ‘clinch_position,’ and ‘video_replay’. The overall fairness confidence level was 37.23%, indicating that the players perceived the referees as unfair. The results of this study can be used as a basis for further research on refereeing fairness.