A development framework for decision support systems in high-performance sport

Abstract

Decision making in sport involves forecasting and selecting choices from different options of action, care, or management. These processes are conditioned by the available information (sometimes limited, fallible, or excessive), the cognitive limitations of the decision-maker (heuristics and biases), the finite amount of available time to make the decision, and the levels of risk and reward. Decision support systems have become increasingly common in sporting contexts such as scheduling optimization, skills evaluation and classification, decision-making assessment, talent identification and team selection, or injury risk assessment. However no specific, formalised framework exists to help guide either the development or evaluation of these systems. Drawing on a variety of literature, this paper proposes a decision support system development framework for specific use in high-performance sport. It proposes three separate criteria for this purpose: 1) Context Satisfaction, 2) Output Quality, and 3) Process Efficiency. Underpinning these criteria there are six specific components: Feasibility, Delivered knowledge, Decisional guidance, Data quality, System error, and System complexity. The proposed framework offers a systematic approach for users to ensure that each of the six components are considered and optimised before, during, and after developing the system. A DSS development framework for high-performance sport should help to improve both short and long term decision-making in a variety of sporting contexts.