TITLE:
Psychological Analysis of Rugby Players Based on Self-Organizing Map (SOM) and Ward’s Method
AUTHORS:
Hongjie Zheng, Takeru Hatachi, Masato Masuda, Koichiro Aoki, Chieko Kato
KEYWORDS:
Psychological Analysis, Rugby Players, Psychological Tests, Self-Organizing Map (SOM), Ward’s Method
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Physical Education,
Vol.10 No.4,
November
11,
2020
ABSTRACT: This research aimed to analyze the mental
level of different players. The targets of the questionnaire were administered
to 32 male elite rugby players. Two different types of clustering analysis
algorithms: SOM and Ward’s method were used for analysis. Results of SOM and
Ward’s method were checked with each other. The two different types of
clustering methods were a good match with each other. Furthermore, the results
of SOM made clearer visualization than Ward’s method and could help us find
more information about the features and relationships of each player. Although
SOM had not been seen a lot used for analyzing in sports, this study confirmed
that SOM is a very effective analysis method for the sports area.