Validity Evidence of Korean Woman Handball Ranking System

Background/Purpose: Current Korean women’s handball ranking system has been unfair and less accurate because player’s ranking has been determined by the percent of successful shooting without the consideration of shooting positions (e.g., 6m & 9m). To improve the ranking system, Kim et al. (2012) developed a new ranking system (Korean Woman Handball Ranking System: KWHRS) utilizing Rasch model and Extended Angoff, but KWHRS has not been validated to the fields enough yet. The purpose of this study was to scrutinize convergent validity evidence of KWHRS as applying for the handball women athletes in 2012.

Method: Shooting scores were collected from 54 female full time players who participated in the games during 2012, which were including total scores and shooting positions. The frequency of successful (S) and failed (F) shootings at four shooting positions [6m, 7m, 9m, and wing (W)] was counted. Then, the equitation of KWHRS was applied to predict new ranking scores: KWHRS = [(9mS×1.74) + (WS×1.37) + (7mS×1.25) + 6mS] - [9mF + (WF×1.37) + (7mF×1.49) + (6mF×1.74)]. To examine the validity evidences, player’s shooting ability scores from 33 coaches were collected as a reference measure. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the convergent validity of KWHRS with average coaches’ score (ACS) and player’s total scores (PTS) applied by SPSS 19.0.

Analysis/Results: Descriptive analysis results were as follows: KWHRS (12.42±17.93), ACS (2.75±0.53), and PTS (47.25±26.67). The validity coefficients (r) were KWHRS vs. ACS = 0.54 and KWHRS vs. PTS = 0.75, with p<.001.

Conclusions: KWHRS showed relatively high validity coefficients with reference measures (e.g., ACS & PTS). More validity evidences of the KWHRS should be provided, and it is recommended for the Korean woman handball association to employ the new ranking system for the fairness of the players in the near future.