Reliability of Wu Huanqun’s Table Tennis Game Analysis Method in Authors’ Own Modification

Abstract

The observation and analysis of the game or the player’s behavior and actions is a very important aspect of optimizing sports training in table tennis. The aim of this study was to present the applied method of observation, developed by Professor Wu Huanqun and modified by the authors, together with an assessment of its reliability. The method consists in observing the winning actions of a given player and the same actions of his opponent in parallel, on three levels of complexity. Levels 1, 2, and 3 are concerned with identifying increasingly detailed winning strokes and stroke combinations. To assess the reliability of the method, seven experts independently analyzed the men’s final game of the World Championship 2019. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, with an χ2 significance test, was used to assess the compliance of the experts. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess internal consistency. The obtained results indicate the high compliance and internal consistency (thus, high reliability) of the assessed method: the highest at the Level 1 observation level and the smallest, but significant, at Level 3. The performed statistical analysis indicates a high agreement between the experts’ opinions, which was taken as a measure of high reliability for the described method of observation.