Researchers wanted to investigate how quickly professional football coaches form an opinion on a young player's potential to reach elite academy level during an open trial match. The researchers wanted to see whether coaches made an almost instant judgment (in under 10 minutes) about a trialist's prospects, as suggested by previous sports psychology research into rapid talent identification.
They collected data from 80 open-play trial matches where coaches observed external prospective players during a regional scouting weekend. The researchers asked the coaches to retrospectively estimate how many minutes of matchplay elapsed before they reached their initial assessment of each player's potential.
The estimated time that it took the coaches to reach this judgment was split into four categories:
The coaches were fully informed about the study's focus on rapid talent identification beforehand and gave their written consent for their data to be compiled and published.
Explain two ways that subjectivity could have influenced this talent-assessment study.
638 exam-style questions on Edexcel A Level Psychology Methods. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.