ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a timeline and description of evolving research on officials in sports sciences, identifying trends, and topics of scholarly research about officials’ participation, performance, and development. Numerous ancient cultures had forms of sport and physical activity, such as Sumer, Egypt, Rome, Mesoamerican, and Greece. However, the Greek or Panhellenic games (e.g., Delphi, Nemea, Isthmia, and Olympia) differed from other ancient activities by holding organized games such as those at Delphi, Nemea, Isthmia, and, most famously, Olympia. The evolution of research on sports officiating, while lagging behind other sport-related research, emerged from a maelstrom created in the wake of the Cold War that resulted in the scientization of education in western nations. This emergence was earmarked by a “redefining” of the field by deemphasizing the pedagogical nature of physical education in favor of a greater focus on developing and sustaining academic disciplines that were more closely aligned with their parent disciplines.
