2012 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 95-114
The aim of this study was to clarify the structure of sailing knowledge. Four hundred and five sailors who belonged to high schools, universities, and companies completed the knowledge test for sailors developed by Sakaguchi and Aoyagi (2009, 2010).
This test consists of 95 test items related to topics such as rigging, sailing, racing, tactics, strategy, and weather. Item Relational Structure analysis developed by Takeya (1988) was applied to right and wrong answers on the test. Arrow diagrams in 6 knowledge areas that displayed hierarchical ordering structure of test items were derived. The complexity of hierarchical ordering structures and the relationships between the numbers of paths between items that have a different direction than the one estimated based on the hierarchical ordering structure, and athletic performance and length of sailing carrier were compared.
The following results were obtained:
1) A more complicated structure was derived in the areas of weather, sailing, and rigging, but not in the areas of strategy, tactics, and racing. This finding indicates that systematic teaching needs to be performed in the former areas, but the knowledge of the latter areas can be taught on an as-needed basis.
2) In three of the arrow diagrams for the 6 areas, some grouping of paths was observed. These clusters are interpreted based on the similarity of the character/nature of the items included the cluster. The names of interpreted cluster are “weather knowledge from a TV weather forecast” and “weather knowledge from a treatise” in weather, “alignment knowledge for instrument and equipment” and “technical knowledge of a sailor” in sailing, and “general knowledge for a sail” and “sailing knowledge specific to game performance” in rigging.
3) Correlation coefficients of the numbers of paths between items that have a different direction than the one estimated based on the hierarchical ordering structure with athletic performance and length of sailing carrier were statistically significant, indicating that sailors with a long carrier or high game performance had systematic knowledge but not partial or fragmentary knowledge.
