Comparing Video-Based and Face-to-Face Psychotherapy: Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-Analysis Across Mental Disorders.

Sports officials play a critical role in ensuring fair play, upholding the rules, and are required to maintain order in many environments, including outdoor (e.g., field, pitch, range, course) and indoor sporting venues (e.g., arena, swimming pool, court, bowling alley, ring). Similar to other sports performers, including athletes and coaches, sports officials are expected to perform their roles under pressure, make critical decisions, have effective communication, and be resilient in the face of criticism. Research in the area of sport psychology has focused predominantly on athletes and coaches with relatively little attention focused on the psychological needs and challenges that are faced by sporting officials (see Forbes & Livingston []; Grylls et al., 2021 []; Maxwell-Keys et al., 2022 [], for some exceptions). In comparison to athletes, much less consideration has been given to identifying and supporting the psychological needs of officials, despite their critical role in the sport environment. As a result, structured training and development specific to sporting officials began to emerge in the early 2000s []. Research that seeks to understand how officials can be psychologically supported is needed because a significant number of sports officials drop out each year. A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics [] revealed a 26% decline in the number of sports officials in Australia, from 456,800–340,000 between 1997 and 2001. Recent data from the Australian Sports Commission [] indicates 5% of the population in the non-playing role of official in 2016 to 4.7% in 2021, and 4.3% in 2024. Currently, there are few opportunities for sports officials to undertake high performance training, compared to coach and athlete development []. Further, in 2021 the Northern Territory Institute of Sport (NTIS) was the only Institute or Academy of Sport in Australia to offer sports official scholarships for officials across multiple sports within an officiating program for a twelve month period, titled the NTIS High Performance Officiating Program (HPOP) []. The HPOP provided opportunities and encouraged officials from the Northern Territory to aspire to and achieve high level national and international standards of officiating. The HPOP aimed to develop each participating official holistically through developing their physical, psychological, nutritional, and game knowledge through a range of activities, including a “give-back” project, weekend workshops, education sessions, regular meetings between each official and mentor, and individual sessions with service providers. However, an aspect of the HPOP that is understudied is the psychological impact of the program on participating officials. Given the broad remit of the HPOP program, to evaluate it requires an equally broad approach. To this end, in the current study the researchers selected psychological markers that have been studied in previous literature concerning tennis officials [], namely resilience, challenge and threat evaluation, and self-efficacy, to assess the psychological effects of the HPOP program on participating officials. Understanding resilience across sporting officials may provide some insight into the retention of sporting officials. Resilience can be defined as “the process by which individuals are able to positively adapt to substantial difficulties, adversity, or hardship” [, p. 592]. Due to the complexity and importance of the tasks officials perform, their role is usually associated with high levels of stress []. Stress and adversity are important in developing resilience and “without any there is nothing to be resilient against” [, p. 586]. Stress among sports officials has been studied across various sports, including rugby union referees [e.g., ], basketball referees [e.g., ], officials from aesthetic sports, such as diving and gymnastics [e.g., ], and handball referees [e.g., ]. The research consistently shows that stress negatively affects performance, particularly in areas such as decision-making, concentration, and confidence []. While a moderate level of stress may enhance alertness, chronic or unmanaged stress is linked to burnout [], reduced retention, and intentions to quit officiating [].