Play on or call a foul: testing and extending distributed situation awareness theory through sports officiating

The distributed situation awareness (DSA) model was introduced almost a decade ago and outlined six core tenets relating to the nature of situation awareness in sociotechnical systems. Despite the model being at the forefront of situation awareness research, to date, there has been no examination of these six tenets. In this paper, we examine each tenet to determine first whether they apply in the domain of fast ball sports officiating and second, to determine whether they require extension or revision in order to remain appropriate and relevant. Based on data from Australian rules football officiating, we find that four of the six tenets remain relevant. We argue, however, that two of the tenets, require revision and extension. Accordingly, we propose alternate tenets and associated research questions to facilitate extension of the theoretical underpinnings of the DSA model into the future.