Studies on contests!
Lets be fair, in the plain light of day, you get drawn number 1 at the Albert Hall, play a blinder on Masquarade and come 4th or 5th (cant remember!) and then hear from a unnamed source that the adjudicators loved the performance and said it set a fantastic level for the contest and didnt think any other band really played better, yet, we came where we did ? Purely scared to make a controvesial yet easy decision, just look at the situation in the Masters! If we don't sit in the box together then we wont do the contest ? Doesnt that sorta point out that they dont want to put their nether regions on the knife like the players do on stage!
Back to the topic, there have been a few minor studies of contesting draws and their effects, the most significant of these appeared in BBW or BB in the early 1990's. The study itself was made by Dr Sven Svebak then of the Psychology department of Bergen University, Norway. I have tried to get more information from Dr Sven but nothing has been forthcoming as yet. But the preliminary results were published ias I said in the BBW or BB. The article was written by Arne Amland and he was kind enough to put me in contact with Dr Svebak. I think it was based on the results of the Norwegian brass band championship section results. The same adjudicators were made to listen to the recordings from the day again, this time with the winning performance being played 3 times, at number 1, 9 and 17, something like that. The results showed that the winning performance played at number one came 6 or 7 places lower whilst the others came in the first 4. Something like that, can't remember fully what the results were!