Performance Evaluation of Basketball Referees with an Integrated MCDM Approach

Basketball referees have to make decisions quickly and accurately under pressure and stress within a limited time. Their decisions affect the results of the match. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the performances of the referees and give them feedback. This study aims to propose an MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) approach to evaluate the performances of basketball referees for the observers and instructors who evaluate officials’ performance. AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and WASPAS (Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment) methods are integrated to evaluate the performance of basketball referees. Criteria weights are considered as equal in the current performance evaluation system of the basketball referees. In this study, the weights of the performance evaluation criteria were determined with the help of the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method, taking into consideration the fact that the criteria will have different importance degrees. Then, the ranking of the basketball referees according to their performances was obtained using the WASPAS method. The obtained rankings of referees by the help of the proposed integrated approach is different from the ranking obtained with the existing basketball referee evaluation system. This is done because, in the proposed approach, weights of different importance are given to the criteria with the AHP method; also, for ranking the referees, the WASPAS method is used. The proposed approach will improve the referee evaluation process and quality. In this manner, the referees’ performance can be discussed more objectively. Objective evaluation criteria will also improve the performance of referees by strengthening the trust of the referees in the system.