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Development and Validation of the Basketball Offensive

Game Performance Instrument

Article  in  Journal of Teaching in Physical Education · January 2013

DOI: 10.1123/jtpe.32.1.100

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 Journal of Teaching
in Physical Education
Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 2013, 32, 100-109
Endorsed by the Curriculum
© 2013 Human Kinetics, Inc. and Instruction Academy of
the NASPE and the AIESEP
www.JTPE-Journal.com
RESEARCH NOTE

Development and Validation

of the Basketball Offensive Game
Performance Instrument
Weiyun Chen1, Kristin Hendricks1, and Weimo Zhu2
1University of Michigan, 2University of Illinois

The purpose of this study was to design and validate the Basketball Offensive Game
Performance Instrument (BOGPI) that assesses an individual player’s offensive
game performance competency in basketball. Twelve physical education teacher
education (PETE) students playing two 10-minute, 3 vs. 3 basketball games were
videotaped at end of a basketball unit in one physical education teaching methods
course. Two investigators independently coded each player’s offensive game
behaviors with BOGPI. The interrater reliability of the BOGPI was 99% and the
alpha reliability coefficient for the total scale of the BOGPI was .95. The content
validity evidence of the BOGPI was established by six experienced experts’ judg-
ment. The results of this study indicate that the BOGPI is a theoretically sound
and psychometrically supported measure that can be used by researchers and
teacher educators to assess the preservice teachers’ offensive game performance
ability in basketball.

Keywords: game performance, game performance assessment

With an increasing application of the tactical games approach to teaching games

over the past two decades, improving students’ game performance competency is
one of the ultimate goals of game learning and teaching (Oslin, Mitchell, & Grif-
fin, 1998). Meeting a growing concern for the preservice teachers’ lack of game
performance competency, the Beginning Physical Education Teacher Standards
(National Association for Sports and Physical Education [NASPE], 2009) explic-
itly state that the preservice teacher should be able to demonstrate competence in
movement performance and tactical concepts and to develop reflection and assess-
ment skills. To help assess and improve preservice teachers’ game performance
competency, the purpose of this study was to design and validate the Basketball
Offensive Game Performance Instrument (BOGPI). The BOGPI was designed to
assess an individual player’s offensive game performance competency in basketball.
The specific objectives of this study were to (a) establish content validity evidence

Chen and Hendricks are with the Kinesiology Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Zhu is with the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, IL.

100
 Game Performance   101

of BOGPI, (b) examine the construct validity of the instrument, and (c) determine
the reliability of the instrument.

A Situated Learning Perspective

Lave and Wenger (1991) proposed that learning takes place within the intertwined
interaction of the individual, the task, and the environment. Learning is the social
process of an individual’s legitimate peripheral participation in a community of
practice. In order for learners to shift from being peripheral participants to becom-
ing full participants in the community of practice, they must actively engage in
and contribute to the socioculturally shared activities. Tasks/activities should be
authentic and relate to the real world. Construction of meaning is linked to specific
contexts and purposes (Kirk & MacPhail, 2002; MacPhail, Kirk, & Griffin, 2008).
From the situated learning perspective, game performance represents the inter-
twined process of a person’s tactical awareness and knowledge, decision making
ability, and skill execution in situated game contexts (Oslin et al., 1998). Tactical
awareness is defined as an individual’s tactical understanding and ability to detect
situated game settings. Skill execution refers to an individual’s ability to execute
technical and tactical aspects of skills appropriate for particular game situations.
In invasion games, individuals spend a considerable amount of time performing
off-the-ball movements like creating open space and supporting the ball carrier
(Oslin et al., 1998). What on-the-ball skills and off-the-ball movements a person
chooses to use and how to execute them depends on the dynamic demands of a
specific game situation. Gréhaigne, Walllian, and Godbout (2005) proposed that
on-the-ball skills and off-the-ball movements in a specific game situation reflect two
essential dimensions: (a) techniques, and (b) tactics. A successful skill execution
and off-the-ball movement depend on how effectively and appropriately a player
executes the technical and tactical aspects of the skill and the movement within a
specific situational game context (Gréhaigne et al., 2005).
The situated perspective views that a task should be situated in authentic and
specific settings (Kirk & MacPhail, 2002; MacPhail et al., 2008). Accordingly, a
game performance assessment instrument should be designed for a specific game
form. For example, although soccer and basketball are classified as invasion games
and share similar tactical concepts, the interaction of the primary game rules, the
number of field players, the size and dimensions of the field/court, and the special-
ized skills used for playing a specific sport make each game context unique and
different from one another. Therefore, the situated and specific nature of each game
context demands designing a game specific assessment instrument.
Oslin et al. (1998) designed the Game Performance Assessment Instrument
(GPAI) that assesses students’ game performance abilities across invasion, net, field,
and target games. The GPAI identifies seven game components (i.e., Base, Adjust,
Decisions Made, Skill Execution, Support, Cover, and Guard/Mark) related to a
variety of game contexts. The rationale for designing the GPAI as a generic and
flexible instrument is that teachers and researchers can flexibly choose any game
components in relation to a specific game form for their research and instructional
purposes. Due to the fact that each sport within the invasion game form is context
situated and specific, the ways to handle similar tactical problems in basketball are
different from other invasion games like soccer. Memmert and Harvey (2008) stated
102  Chen, Hendricks, and Zhu

that the broad game component definition and the general coding system of the
GPAI might cause difficulty for teachers and researchers to objectively assess and
code if a player’s game performance on a specific game component is appropriate/
efficient or inappropriate/inefficient to a specific game situation. Therefore, it is
critical to modify the global features of the GPAI by defining them as specifically
as possible as well as to make the game performance assessment criteria and coding
protocols more adaptable to a particular game context (Memmert & Harvey, 2008).

Methods
Research Participants and Setting
The participants were junior and senior physical education teacher education (PETE)
majors (5 males and 7 females) who were enrolled in a physical education teach-
ing methods course at a major university. Their average age was 21 years old with
a standard deviation of 2.27 years. Among them, seven had varsity high school
playing experience in basketball and the other five did not have any experience in
basketball. Throughout the semester, the PETE students were taught three inva-
sion games and one net game using a tactical games approach (Mitchell, Oslin, &
Griffin, 2006) The University Institutional Review Board approved the study and
the participants signed an informed consent form before data collection

Development of the BOGPI

The BOGPI was designed to provide teachers and researchers with a reliable and
valid assessment instrument that assesses preservice teachers’ offensive game
performance competency in basketball. The investigators worked together to
design, revise, test, and redesign the BOGPI. First, they used GPAI’s (Oslin et al.,
1998) three offensive game components (i.e., Skill Execution, Decision Making,
and Support) as the three game dimensions in the BOGPI. Then, they identified
essential subgame components within each game dimension. Next, they used the
situated learning perspective’s premises as guidelines for defining each subgame
component. Subsequently, the investigators selected six preservice teachers who
did not participate in this study as a panel of experts to judge the content validity
of the instrument (i.e., subcomponent definitions). The selection of the experts
for the panel was based on three criteria: (a) playing on varsity basketball team in
high school, (b) having at least four years of basketball coaching experiences, (c)
either playing on a varsity basketball team in college or participating in basketball
intramural/club teams. The experts judged the content of the BOGPI using a 5-point
rating scale (5 = very precisely, 4 = precisely, 3 = sort of precisely, 2 = less precisely,
1 = not precisely). After numerous revisions, the investigators finalized definitions
of all subgame components in the BOGPI (see Table 1).
A rating scale (i.e., +/yes; -/no; N/A; see Table 1 for a complete description
of each point) with an event recording method was used for the BOGPI to help
objectively assess a preservice teacher’s offensive game performance. On the BOGPI
assessment sheet (see Table 2), each game component was broken down into five
columns marked one through five, representing five segments of the team gaining
 Game Performance   103

Table 1  Definition of Each Sub-Game Component and Rating

Scales in the BOGPI
Game
Dimension Definition of Each Game Component
Skill Execu- 1. Dribbling: Dribbles a ball when appropriate while changing pace
tion: and directions to maintain control of the ball.
2. Passing: Passes accurately when a teammate is open, has a good
supporting position, or has the best shooting position.
3. Shooting: Shoots when getting open and scores a basket.
Decision 1. Attempts to dribble to take on/beat defender, drive to the basket, or
Making: read situations.
2. Attempts to pass to set up a shot, move the ball, beat defender, or set
up offense.
3. Attempts to shoot when in good position and wide open.
Support: 1. Reads defense and offense situations to effectively and appropriately
use cuts or post up.
2. Reads defense/offense situations to effectively and appropriately set
screens.
3. Reads the defender to effectively come off screens by using roll, pop
out, curl, and/or fade appropriately
4. Reads defense/offense situations to effectively and appropriately
relocate positions.
Rating Scale: “+” indicates that an individual player demonstrates the definition of
each individual game component.
“-” indicates that an individual player does not demonstrate the defini-
tion of each individual game component.
“/” indicates that the definition of a specific game component is not
applicable to an individual player.

possession of the ball. Using the BOGPI assessment sheet, an evaluator observed
and recorded the presence or absence of a specified game behavior on each subgame
component with a tally mark when the observed player’s team gained possession
of the ball. The coding protocol included: (a) identifying two targeted players to
observe; one from each team; (b) observing the targeted player’s offensive game
behaviors until a turnover in possession occurred; (c) coding the player’s offen-
sive game performance in each subgame component; (d) switching to observing
and coding the opponent’s offensive game behaviors until there was a turnover in
possession; (e) taking turns observing and coding the pair of individual players’
offensive game behaviors throughout the 10-minute game play using the above
procedures; (f) rewinding the DVD to the beginning of the game to observe and
 104  Chen, Hendricks, and Zhu

Table 2  BOGPI Assessment Sheet

Essent. Decision
Dim. Skill Execution Making
Dribbles a ball Passes accu- Shoots when Attempts to Attempts to
while chang- rately when appropriate dribble to pass to set up
ing pace and a teammate and scores a take on / beat a shot, move
direction and is open, has basket defender, drive ball, beat
maintaining a good sup- to basket, or defender, or
control of the porting posi- read situations set up offense
ball tion and/or a
shooting posi-
tion
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
1. Student A
2. Student B
3. Student C
4. Student D
5. Student E
6. Student F
7. Student G
8. Student H
9. Student I
10. Student J
11. Student K
12. Student L
Note: Columns 1-5 represent five different times an individual player gains possession of the ball. For example,
column 1 will be used to assess a player’s performance on the relevant game component(s) during the first time
he/she gains possession of the ball. If he/she demonstrates the criteria of the game component, “+” will be used in
the first column; if not, “-” will be marked in the first column; if not applicable, “NA” will be used.

code the next pair of individual players’ offensive game behaviors throughout the
10-minute game until all players’ offensive game performance have been coded.

Data Collection
At the end of the basketball unit, the participants were organized into four teams
of three players. Three of the teams consisted of two females and one male while
the fourth team consisted of two males and one female. In addition, three of the
teams consisted of two students who had played on varsity basketball teams in
high school (one male and one female) while the fourth team only consisted of
one student (female) with such experience. The seven participants (four females
and three males) who had high school varsity playing experience in basketball
were classified into the experienced group. In contrast, the five participants (three
 Game Performance   105

Support
Attempts to Reads defense Reads defense Reads the Reads defense
shoot when in and offense and offense defender to and offense
good position situations to situations to effectively situations to
or wide open effectively and effectively and come off effectively and
appropriately appropriately screens by appropriately
use cuts or/ set screens using roll, pop relocate posi-
post up out, curl, or tions
fade appropri-
ately
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

females and two males) who did not have any previous basketball playing experi-
ence before participating in the methods course were classified into the novice
group. They played two 10-minute 3 vs. 3 games, which were videotaped by a
research assistant. Before officially coding the two videotaped 10-minute game
play sessions, the two investigators spent an estimated 20 hr observing and coding
four players’ offensive game behaviors with the BOGPI assessment sheet until
they obtained 88% interrater reliability. Then, the two investigators independently
coded each player’s game behaviors using the BOGPI assessment sheet. At the end
of the coding process, the investigators transformed the coded game behaviors into
an index score of each game component. An example of calculating an index score
is: Skill Execution Index (SEI) = [the number of efficient game responses ÷ (the
number of efficient game responses + the number of inefficient game responses)]
× the total number of times the player gained possession of the ball. The Overall
106  Chen, Hendricks, and Zhu

Game Performance Index (OGPI) is calculated as: OGPI = (SEI + DMI + SI) ÷ 3
(Oslin et al., 1998).

Data Analysis
Subgame component definitions were considered appropriate if 66% of the experts
rated a definition as “precisely” or “very precisely.” A Welch’s formula of t test was
used to examine differences of offensive game behaviors between the novice and
experienced groups. The standardized-difference effect size (Cohen’s d) (Trusty,
Thompson, & Petrocelli, 2004) was used to report the mean differences of the
dependent variables between the two groups. The interrater reliability of the BOGPI
was examined by checking each investigator’s coding results item by item using
the formula: % R = numbers of agreement ÷ (numbers of agreement + numbers
of disagreement) * 100 (van der Mars, 1989). The Cronbach alpha reliability coef-
ficient was used to determine the internal consistency reliability of the BOGPI.

Results
Validity of the BOGPI

Content Validity.  Table 3 presents the percentage of the expert judgment of the
content of the BOGPI with a 5-point rating scale. Sixty-six percent of the experts

Table 3  Percentage of the Expert Judgment of the Content

of the BOGPI with a 5-point Rating Scale
Game Components 5 4 3 2 1
Skill Execution
 Dribbling 66 33
 Passing 66 33
 Shooting 50 50
Decision Making
  Attempts to dribble 66 33
  Attempts to pass 66 33
  Attempts to shoot 66 33
Support
  Creating Space 50 50
  Setting Screens 50 50
  Reading Defender 50 50
 Relocating 50 50
Note. 5 = Very Precisely; 4 = Precisely; 3 = Sort of Precisely; 2 = Less Precisely; 1 = Not
Precisely
 Game Performance   107

rated that the definition of Dribbling and Passing was stated “very precisely” and
33% of the experts rated it “precisely”. Fifty percent of the experts rated that the
definition of Shooting was stated “precisely” and 50% rated it “sort of precisely”.
In addition, three experts suggested changing the definition of shooting to the new
definition of “shoots when getting open and scores a basket,” which was adopted
in the BOGPI. Sixty-six percent of the experts rated that the definitions of the three
subgame components on the Decision Making were stated “very precisely” and
33% rated them “precisely”. Fifty percent of the experts rated that the definitions
of the four subgame components on the Support were stated “very precisely” and
50% rated them “precisely”. The results of the experts’ judgment established the
content validity evidence of the BOGPI.
Construct Validity.  Table 4 presents the descriptive statistics for the index scores
of the four game components, the results of the t tests, and the Cohen’s d values
between the two groups. The t test yielded that the mean score of the OGPI in the
novice group was significantly lower than that of the OGPI in the experienced
group, indicating that the BOGPI was a valid instrument to distinguish the play-
ers’ overall offensive game ability between the two groups. In addition, the t tests
revealed a significant mean score difference of the SEI, DMI, and SI between the
two groups, indicating that the BOGPI could differentiate the players’ ability of
executing skills, making decisions, and providing support between the novice and
the experienced groups.

Reliability of the BOGPI

Eleven hundred game behaviors were coded independently by the two investigators.
Of the coded game behaviors, the number of agreement was 1,089. According to
the formula (IR% = 1089 ÷ 1100), the interrater reliability of the BOGPI was 99%,
indicating a high consistency between the two raters’ judgment (van der Mars,
1989). The alpha reliability coefficient for the total scale of the BOGPI was .94,
which is higher than .70, thus demonstrating a high degree of internal consistency
reliability (Stevens, 2002).

Table 4  Statistics of the Index Score of the Four Game

Components Between the Two Groups
Novice Experienced
Cohen’s d
M (SD) M (SD) t test (nonoverlap%)
SEI 5.01 (1.80) 10.63 (2.25) -4.67** 2.75 (81%)
DMI 7.77 (3.39) 13.25 (1.97) -2.99* 1.97 (79%)
SI 9.50 (1.29) 14.25 (3.45) -3.44** 1.82 (77%)
OGPI 7.43 (1.90) 12.71 (1.98) -4.475** 2.72 (81%)
Note. ** represents p < .01, * represents p < .05
108  Chen, Hendricks, and Zhu

Discussion and Implications

The content validity of the BOGPI was established by determining the appropriate-
ness of the BOGPI in assessing preservice teachers’ offensive game performance
competency in basketball. First, the three dimensions of the BOGPI provided
adequate opportunities for the players to demonstrate offensive game behaviors
during basketball game play. Second, the specification of criteria for assessing each
subgame component was situated in authentic game contexts. Last, similar to the
study by Oslin et al. (1998), this study observed and assessed the players’ game
performance ability in authentic game situations, which was critical in obtaining
meaningful and relevant information about the demonstration of specific games
behaviors.
The construct validity of the BOGPI was also established in this study. The
results of the t tests indicated that the BOGPI was a valid instrument to differentiate
the players’ overall game performance ability between the novice and experienced
groups. Furthermore, this study indicated that the Skill Execution, Decision Making,
and Support were valid individual game performance variables to distinguish the
offensive game ability in basketball between/among the players of the two groups.
The high degree of interrater reliability and internal consistency in this study might
be related to the specific definition of each subgame component, the event recording
method, and the coding protocol.
This study suggests that the specific definition of the subgame component, the
event recording method, and the articulated coding protocol help the evaluators
gain a better understanding of what game performance behaviors they should focus
on observing, how to distinguish between specific game components, and how to
code a specific game performance behavior in a live physical education lesson. The
significant contribution of the BOGPI with the specified coding protocol is that it
makes a peer assessment in a live physical education lesson possible and feasible.
This instrument could also be used as a self-assessment tool for the preservice
teacher to self-assess his/her own game performance while watching the videotaped
game play. The preservice teacher’s engagement in the peer-assessment and self-
assessment tasks is instrumental to improving his/her own tactical understanding
and game performance. More importantly, it is helpful for the preservice teacher
to develop and build his/her keen observation and diagnostic evaluation skills.
In conclusion, the BOGPI is a theoretically sound and psychometrically
supported measure. It can be used by researchers and teacher educators to assess
the preservice teacher’s offensive game performance ability in basketball using
videotaped game play. Future studies may focus on the students’ perspectives and
experiences in using the BOGPI either to assess their peers’ game performance
during the game play in a live lesson, or to self-assess their own game performance
while watching the videotaped game play. Researchers may also use broad samples
of preservice teachers in various PETE programs to examine the psychometric
properties of the instrument using cross-sectional and/or longitudinal research
designs. The game-specific assessment instrument is essential to helping improve the
preservice teachers’ specific, relational, and situated pedagogical content knowledge
and subject expertise in authentic learning and teaching settings.
 Game Performance   109

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