Analysis of Performance Indicators in Decision-Making and Execution in U14 Female Basketball Players
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors, please find below my review of the research article “Analysis of performance indicators in decision-making and execution in U14 female basketball players”. I have divided the research article into individual sections, which I have assessed.
Abstract. This section of the research article is well written; however, I would suggest adding numerical values to the research findings. Please also include information on the statistical methods used in the research article. In the keywords, I would replace ‘Women’s basketball’ with ‘female’.
Introduction. This section of the research article introduces the reader to the research problem addressed in the article. The issue with this section is that the authors draw on publications relating to basketball, albeit at a high level of training. In my opinion, the authors should cite research publications concerning girls in a similar age group who train in basketball or other team sports. Instead of relying on general studies of adult athletes (publications nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 17, 18, 21, 23). Please cite publications assessing decision-making in youth sport, not at a high level, concerning a similar study group. These could be publications on young handball or football players, of course, if there are no publications on basketball players.
Materials and methods. The study group is small (n=11; only one team). The authors should explicitly describe this as a case study. Is the date given for the Institutional Review Board Statement, correct? “11 April 2025”
Results. Table 4 has incorrectly formatted columns for the total (“TOTAL”). When reporting the significance level (p-value), confidence intervals are missing for the effect size measures (eta-squared, Cramer’s V). The results of the post-hoc tests, indicated by superscript footnotes, are difficult to read correctly in the current graphical layout and require a clearer format.
Discussion and conclusions. In the discussion section, please amend the citations that are not relevant to the study group (age, high levels of training and competitive sport), as in the introduction. In the practical conclusions, please provide more detailed information on recommendations for coaches.
References. The reference list does not sufficiently address the youngest age groups and women’s basketball, relying predominantly on publications concerning professional men’s basketball or senior competitions. I would ask that the citations be amended to include women’s team sports (handball, football) in a similar study group.
Author Response
First of all, we would like to thank you for the time and effort devoted to reviewing our manuscript and for your valuable comments and suggestions. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to all the issues raised.
Comments 1: Abstract. This section of the research article is well written; however, I would suggest adding numerical values to the research findings. Please also include information on the statistical methods used in the research article. In the keywords, I would replace ‘Women’s basketball’ with ‘female’.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have included information on the statistical methods used (Page 1, paragraph 1, line 16-19) and added numerical values to the results (Page 1, paragraph 1, line 19-21). In addition, we have considered the suggestion to replace the keyword with “female”, as you correctly suggested (Page 1, paragraph 2, line 29).
Comments 2: Introduction. This section of the research article introduces the reader to the research problem addressed in the article. The issue with this section is that the authors draw on publications relating to basketball, albeit at a high level of training. In my opinion, the authors should cite research publications concerning girls in a similar age group who train in basketball or other team sports. Instead of relying on general studies of adult athletes (publications nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 17, 18, 21, 23). Please cite publications assessing decision-making in youth sport, not at a high level, concerning a similar study group. These could be publications on young handball or football players, of course, if there are no publications on basketball players.
Response 2: We appreciate your comment. Regarding the first part of your comment, we have replaced all the general studies on adults that you mentioned with research focused on women’s basketball or youth players (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34, 35). Concerning the second part of your comment, we have added a paragraph that expands on the information in the introduction about decision-making in youth sports, including three additional citations (Page 2, paragraph 4, line 66-67).
Comments 3: Materials and methods. The study group is small (n=11; only one team). The authors should explicitly describe this as a case study. Is the date given for the Institutional Review Board Statement, correct? “11 April 2025”
Response 3: In accordance with your instructions, we have revised the content of the paragraph about the participants to clarify that this is a case study, as you specifically requested (Page 2, paragraph 7, line 80). In reference to the question regarding the Institutional Review Board Statement about the accuracy of the date provided, we confirm that it is correct.
Comments 4: Results. Table 4 has incorrectly formatted columns for the total (“TOTAL”). When reporting the significance level (p-value), confidence intervals are missing for the effect size measures (eta-squared, Cramer’s V). The results of the post-hoc tests, indicated by superscript footnotes, are difficult to read correctly in the current graphical layout and require a clearer format.
Response 4: We agree with you that the original format of Table 4 was not optimal. We have restructured the table so that the “TOTAL” column now clearly represents the overall sample and is no longer interpreted as an additional category of playing position. We have also added a dedicated column for the test statistic, p-value, and effect size (Cramer’s V for chi-square analyses) (Table 4, page 5, paragraph 5, lines 158-161). While reviewing the results, we detected an error in the ASR for the pass action, which has also been rewritten and corrected in the table. And we have clarified the footnotes for all tables by setting the superscripts to font size 10 to improve the readability of the post-hoc information.
Comments 5: Discussion and conclusions. In the discussion section, please amend the citations that are not relevant to the study group (age, high levels of training and competitive sport), as in the introduction. In the practical conclusions, please provide more detailed information on recommendations for coaches.
Response 5: Thank you for your comment, as you suggested, we have removed and replaced all citations that were not relevant to the study group in this research with others that were relevant (4, 6, 18, 23, 25). Also, we led to the inclusion of specific practical recommendations for coaches in the conclusions, outlining how players can improve by taking into account the specific characteristics they demonstrated (Page 11, paragraph 3, lines 344-350) and (Page 11, paragraph 4, lines 359-362).
Comments 6: References. The reference list does not sufficiently address the youngest age groups and women’s basketball, relying predominantly on publications concerning professional men’s basketball or senior competitions. I would ask that the citations be amended to include women’s team sports (handball, football) in a similar study group.
Response 6: Finally, we would also like to express our gratitude for this latest comment. We have corrected it and expanded the references to better reflect the population in our study, specifically, female and youth basketball (Page 12-14, References, nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34 and 35).
Should you require any further clarification or have any additional suggestions, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear author,
The manuscript presents an interesting and well-organized study, with a clear and coherent overall structure. However, the originality and overall significance of the research are considered moderate. The abstract and the introduction require improvement. The research design and methodology are clearly presented and are of interest, while the results are reported in a clear and comprehensible manner. The conclusions are adequately supported by the study findings and are linked to potential practical applications. Overall, the quality and scientific soundness of the manuscript are assessed as ranging from average to high.
Abstract
The abstract should include specific numerical results for the main findings, such as mean values, percentages, p-values or effect sizes.
Introduction
The authors should explain why they selected these specific offensive plays rather than other performance indicators, such as rebounding, which also plays an important role in basketball performance.
Participants
Only two guards participated in the study, which constitutes an important limitation, as it is reasonable to assume that these players accumulated substantial playing time. The inclusion of only two guards represents a significant methodological limitation. The very small sample reduces the generalizability of the findings and does not adequately represent players from different playing positions and tactical roles. Moreover, guards typically have greater ball-handling responsibilities and may play for longer periods, resulting in a disproportionately high number of decisions and recorded actions. Fatigue, differences in playing time, and repeated observations derived from the same two players may also influence the results. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted with caution and limited to the specific players and competitive conditions examined.
Statistical analysis
The sample is very small and unevenly distributed across playing positions. In particular, the guard group includes only two players, making it impossible to estimate the within-group variance reliably.
Results
The results are presented in a detailed and clear manner, while the tables are also comprehensive and easy to understand.Overall, the hypotheses were subjected to sufficiently rigorous and methodologically sound testing.
Discussion
The Discussion section could be strengthened through a more in-depth comparison of the findings with the existing literature. The authors should provide clearer explanations of the possible mechanisms underlying the findings, discuss their practical implications in greater detail, and identify the respects in which the results are consistent with or differ from those of previous studies.
Conclusions
The conclusions are generally supported by the findings. However, they should be presented more cautiously in view of the small and unevenly distributed sample, particularly the inclusion of only two guards. The authors should avoid broad generalizations and clearly indicate that the conclusions are limited to the players and competitive context examined in the study.
References
The cited references are appropriate and relevant to the topic of the research.
Additional references should be included in the Introduction and Conclusions sections.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
First of all, we would like to thank you for the time and effort devoted to reviewing our manuscript and for your valuable comments and suggestions. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to all the issues raised.
Comments 1: Abstract. The abstract should include specific numerical results for the main findings, such as mean values, percentages, p-values or effect sizes.
Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We have included numerical values to the results expressing our approval of the comment provided (Page 1, paragraph 1, line 19-21).
Comments 2: Introduction. The authors should explain why they selected these specific offensive plays rather than other performance indicators, such as rebounding, which also plays an important role in basketball performance.
Response 2: We appreciate your comment and will consider incorporating rebounding as a performance factor in future research but we selected these five offensive actions for analysis because, as we have defined them, they are exclusively offensive in basketball. Both the expert panel and our research team consider rebounding to be an action in which the player does not possess the ball and attempts to regain possession following a missed shot. Consequently, rebounding aligns more closely with defensive actions, such as steals. This is the primary reason we chose not to include rebounding in the present study. And we explained this in the introduction (Page 2, paragraph 3, line 53-55).
Comments 3: Participants. Only two guards participated in the study, which constitutes an important limitation, as it is reasonable to assume that these players accumulated substantial playing time. The inclusion of only two guards represents a significant methodological limitation. The very small sample reduces the generalizability of the findings and does not adequately represent players from different playing positions and tactical roles. Moreover, guards typically have greater ball-handling responsibilities and may play for longer periods, resulting in a disproportionately high number of decisions and recorded actions. Fatigue, differences in playing time, and repeated observations derived from the same two players may also influence the results. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted with caution and limited to the specific players and competitive conditions examined.
Response 3: In accordance with your instructions, we have included a sentence in this section to make it clear that this research is a specific case study, and as you rightly point out, we should not generalize based on the results obtained (Page 2, paragraph 7, line 80). We settle that the inclusion of only two guards is a clear limitation, as we noted in the limitations of this study. This reflects the actual roster structure of the single team studied and the natural distribution of playing positions in this specific case without making a selective sample of players. We have revised the manuscript to state more explicitly that the study is exploratory and that the findings are limited to this team and competitive context (Page 9, paragraph 2, lines 255-258 and line 263), (Page 10, paragraph 5, 322-324), (Page 11, paragraph 2, line 334) and (Page 11, paragraph 3, line 342).
Comments 4: Statistical analysis. The sample is very small and unevenly distributed across playing positions. In particular, the guard group includes only two players, making it impossible to estimate the within-group variance reliably.
Response 4: We agree that the small number of players per position, and particularly the guard subgroup (n = 2), limits the estimation of within-group variability and reduces statistical power for the position-based comparisons. For this reason, we have interpreted these inferential results with caution and now explicitly frame the guard-related comparisons as exploratory and hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory. We retained rather than removed these analyses because they still offer valuable descriptive information for an understudied population (U14 female basketball). This limitation applies specifically to the player-level MANOVA/ANOVA comparisons (SEI, DMI, GP), the frequency-based chi-square analyses of offensive actions by position (based on the 9,450 coded actions across 15 matches) are unaffected, as they do not rely on player-level variance estimation.
In addition to this justification, a paragraph has been added to the statistical analysis section that clearly acknowledges the point raised in this comment (Page 5, paragraph 4, lines 146-149).
Comments 5: Results. The results are presented in a detailed and clear manner, while the tables are also comprehensive and easy to understand. Overall, the hypotheses were subjected to sufficiently rigorous and methodologically sound testing.
Response 5: Thank you very much for this comment.
Comments 6: Discussion. The Discussion section could be strengthened through a more in-depth comparison of the findings with the existing literature. The authors should provide clearer explanations of the possible mechanisms underlying the findings, discuss their practical implications in greater detail, and identify the respects in which the results are consistent with or differ from those of previous studies.
Response 6: Taking this comment into consideration, we have been more specific regarding the similarities and differences with previous research, clarifying our findings accordingly (Page 9, paragraph 2, lines 250-252, lines 255-258, lines 260-262), (Page 9, paragraph 3, lines 265-266), (Page 9, paragraph 4, lines 274-276), (Page 10, paragraph 1, lines 278-279), (Page 10, paragraph 2, lines 285-287), (Page 10, paragraph 4, lines 308-309, lines 315-316 and lines 320-321).
In addition, specific practical implications for the team under study have been incorporated into the conclusions. (Page 11, paragraph 3, lines 344-350) and (Page 11, paragraph 4, lines 359-362).
Comments 7: Conclusions. The conclusions are generally supported by the findings. However, they should be presented more cautiously in view of the small and unevenly distributed sample, particularly the inclusion of only two guards. The authors should avoid broad generalizations and clearly indicate that the conclusions are limited to the players and competitive context examined in the study.
Response 7: We appreciate this comment. The generalizations in the conclusions have been revised as noted by the reviewer, and it has been specified that all conclusions are specific to the present study (Page 11, paragraph 2, line 334) and (Page 11, paragraph 3, line 342).
Comments 8: References. The cited references are appropriate and relevant to the topic of the research. Additional references should be included in the Introduction and Conclusions sections.
Response 8: Thank you for this comment. The references have been revised to clarify the intended scope of the study, incorporating new citations as suggested by the reviewer, with a focus on female basketball, youth basketball, and decision-making in team sports (Page 12-14, References, nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 33, 34 and 35).
Should you require any further clarification or have any additional suggestions, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
