Knowing What is Fair: Epistemological Orientations Toward Rules, Judging, and Fair Play in Competitive Swimming

Fair play in competitive swimming is not only about following competition rules but it also demands that athletes acknowledge the legitimacy of officiating decisions, differentiate acceptable strategies from unethical violations and reflect on their sporting conduct. This study investigated epistemological orientations toward fair play among competitive swimmers, differentiated rule-related statements from judgment-related statements and gender differences. Cross sectional quantitative design was used with 122 competitive swimmers consisting of 56 male and 66 female from five swimming clubs in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Eight epistemological statements were selected from a 24-item philosophical fair-play questionnaire using five-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics, item analysis, internal consistency assessment and Welch’s independent samples t test were used. Generally, favourable epistemological orientations (M = 35.61 SD = 3.84) were found with good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .869). Understanding how competition rules contribute to fair participation was endorsed most strongly (M = 4.60) while respect for officiating decisions even when personally unfavourable were least agreed upon and most variable (M = 4.18, SD = 0.87). No difference between male and female swimmers was found t (116.43) = 0.90 p = .371 small effect size (Hedges’ g = 0.16). Athletes strongly agree with rule-related fairness but acceptance of personally unfavourable decisions is less uniform. The study shows that rule understanding, officiating authority and ethical reflection need to be integrated into fair-play education but self-reported orientations do not necessarily reflect demonstrated knowledge or competitive behaviour.