Development and Validation of the Kabaddi Offensive and Defensive Observational Instrument

Background: Identify techniques and tactics and their analysis in training sessions, in addition to providing accurate information to improve the weaknesses of the team, help the coach in the training process and identify physical, behavioral, and technical requirements of players.
Objective: This study, through the principles of observational approach, aims to development and validation of an instrument to analyze observable behaviors during a kabaddi match.
Method: For this purpose, four matches of Iranian men's kabaddi team and five Iranian women's kabaddi team in the Incheon Asian Games in South Korea in 2014 were selected for this study. At first for higher transparency of the aspects of kabaddi play, describing offensive and defensive behaviors were revise and clarified; The final version was provided to 10 experienced coaches and teachers of kabaddi to determine the content validity and Intra-rater and inter-rater methods used for determining the reliability by two people, including a coach and a referee. To coordinate between the observers in the process of assessing reliability of kabaddi defensive and offensive behaviours, the beginning and end of each raid were coded into a behaviour unit. In each behaviour unit, the raiding player's offensive behaviour and the opponent's defensive behaviour were simultaneously coded.
Results: In this instrument, results of means of content validity index for offensive and defensive behaviors  at 0.05 significance level were 0.8 and 0.89, respectively. The results for means of intra-observer reliability for both categories of offensive and defensive behaviors k = 0.99 and k = 0.97 were obtained, respectively. The mean of inter-observer reliability for categories of offensive and defensive behaviors were k = 0.89 and k = 0.88, respectively, indicating high agreement between the two raters.
Conclusion: Observational design of the current research had a high power to collect, manage, and analyse data by a precise definition of the skills and kabaddi variables. Then, this instrument can be used as a suitable observational instrument by coaches to identify and analyze kabaddi’s defensive and offensive performances.