A Uniform Approach for Advancing Athlete Assessment: A Tutorial on the Lens Model

In athlete assessment, coaches or scouts typically judge athletes by observing and combining information about their attributes. However, how accurate is the expert's eye in combining this information, and can its accuracy be improved? To address these questions, this paper introduces the Lens Model, a framework for studying human judgment that has been widely successful in other performance domains. Since the framework offers both theoretical and practical benefits and is new to sports scientists and practitioners, our paper is presented in the form of a tutorial. First, we discuss the need for the Lens Model in sports; second, we demonstrate its proven value outside of sports. Third, we provide a conceptual explanation of the Lens Model, detailing, among other aspects, how experts' judgmental policies can be modeled and how judgmental accuracy can be determined and evaluated. This is followed by an empirical example: a study on the judgments of soccer scouts, along with suggestions to improve their accuracy. To inspire further Lens Model research across sports, we conclude with prospective research directions.