AUTHOR=Sato Nahoko 

TITLE=Reliability of judging in Olympic breaking at the 2024 Paris games

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 16 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1593158

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1593158

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=IntroductionAlthough breakdancing was adopted as an Olympic sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics, difficulty of techniques and objective evaluation criteria for each technique were not clearly defined. The reliability of the evaluation system for breaking at the 2024 Olympics has not yet been analysed in the literature. This study reviews research on judging in other aesthetic sports and aims to evaluate the reliability of the scoring results for breakdancing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.MethodologyThe results of the 2024 Paris Olympics were extracted from the official Olympics website. The competition was conducted in a one-on-one battle format. Using a slide bar, the judges evaluated which dancer performed better in five categories: technique, vocabulary, originality, execution, and musicality. Absolute deviations from the final score for individual judges were calculated as measures of bias for validity analysis. The reliability of the evaluation was assessed using the intra-class correlation coefficients and Kendall’s W.ResultsThis study found that the reliability of the judges’ scores was equivalent to that of DanceSport and hip-hop dance competitions and was considerably lower than that of artistic gymnastics competitions. Moreover, the originality category demonstrated good reliability, while the other four categories showed poor reliability. The judges were aware of the characteristics of breakdancing, where the winner was determined by the impressions and excitement of the audience, and this may have led to more reliable scoring in the artistic rather than in the technical category.DiscussionThese results will contribute to developing a more reliable evaluation system for hip-hop dance competitions.