Relative age effect in males, but not females, undergraduate students of sport science

Boccia, Gennaro; Rainoldi, Alberto; Brustio, Paolo Riccardo

doi:10.1007/s11332-017-0364-7

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Therefore, further studies should provide wider scenarios able to show data from different Italian soccer categories along several seasons. Moreover, the present study focused only on male athletes, highlighting the need to investigate the possible gender difference in the Italian context, in line with previous studies [ 9 , 36 ]. Then, to assess the players’ RAE, it has been only considered the birthdate, avoiding any reference to the individual performance (e.g., number of the match involvement or total minutes played during a season) [ 17 ] or salary engagements [ 24 ], highlighting how this additional information might be useful to better describe RAE.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The relative age effect (RAE; i.e., an asymmetry in the birth distribution) is a bias observed in sport competitions that may favour relatively older athletes in talent identification. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the presence of RAE in elite soccer players competing in the Italian championships, even considering the discriminations of younger and older Serie A players (in relation to the median age of the sample), and different positional roles (i.e., goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, forward) for each observed category. A total of 2051 players competing into the 2017–2018 Italian under-15 (n = 265), under-16 (n = 362), under-17 (n = 403), Primavera (n = 421) and Serie A (n = 600) championships were analysed. The birth-date distributions, grouped in four quartiles (i.e., January-March, Q1; April-June, Q2; July-September, Q3; October-December, Q4), were compared to a uniform distribution using Chi-squared analysis. The week of birth was analysed using Poisson regression. The results showed a large over-representation of players born in Q1 in all soccer player categories. However, the effect size of this trend resulted smaller as age increased. Individuals born in Q1 have about two-folds more chances to become a Serie A player compared to those born in Q4. The Poisson regression analysis showed that RAE was greater for defenders than for forwards among all categories. Therefore, a strongly biased selection emerged among elite soccer players competing in Italian championships, highlighting how young individuals born in the first three months have many more chances to become elite players compared to the others.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This leads to an over-representation of athletes born close to selection date. This phenomenon is recognized with the name of Relative Age Effect (RAE) (Barnsley et al, 1985; Musch and Grondin, 2001; Boccia et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Beginning of Senior Career in Team Sport Is Affected by Relative Age Effect

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many previous studies in national team sports did not report evidence about relative age effect (RAE) in senior categories. This study aimed for the first time to determine if the RAE may specifically affect the early, but not the late, phase of senior career in elite team sports. A total of 3,319 birthdates (basketball: n = 642; rugby: n = 572; soccer: n = 1318; volleyball: n = 337; water polo: n = 450) of elite senior players were analyzed. Senior players with an age lower or equal to the 25° percentile of age were considered as early phase players while the others as late phase players. Separate Poisson regression models were applied to investigate the RAE in each sport (overall, and for early phase and late phase subgroups). Considering the overall sample, players born close to the beginning of the year were 1.57, 1.34, 2.69, 1.48, and 1.45 times more likely to reach first and second Italian division of basketball, rugby, soccer, volleyball, and water polo respectively, than those born in the last part of the year. RAE was present in all early phase subgroups. Differently, in the late phase subgroups the RAE was present only in soccer. Data highlighted a bias in the selection of senior teams, which may limit the chance to identify talented players born late in the second part of the year. Italian sport federations should promote the talent development of relatively younger players by equally promoting the joining of young players to senior teams.

show abstract

“…Moreover, the talent identification could be influenced by environmental factors, concerning social constructs (Wattie et al, 2015) like physical and sociocultural environment policies and social agents such as parents, coaches, or athletes (Hancock et al, 2013). The term relative age effect (RAE) refers to an asymmetry in the birth distribution of a population where there is an over-representation of athletes born close to the date of selection (Cobley et al, 2009; Boccia et al, 2017b). The RAE was first observed in Canadian ice hockey (Barnsley et al, 1985) and subsequently in many other team sports, such as soccer (Steingröver et al, 2017; Brustio et al, 2018; Cumming et al, 2018; Doyle and Bottomley, 2018; Peña-González et al, 2018), Australian football (Haycraft et al, 2018), basketball (Arrieta et al, 2016), and rugby (Till et al, 2010), as well as in individual sports, such as swimming (Cobley et al, 2018) alpine ski (Müller et al, 2016; Bjerke et al, 2017) wrestling (Fukuda et al, 2017), and track and field (Romann and Cobley, 2015; Brazo-Sayavera et al, 2017, 2018; Kearney et al, 2018; Romann et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relative Age Influences Performance of World-Class Track and Field Athletes Even in the Adulthood

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The relative age effect (RAE) is a common phenomenon observed in youth sports and is characterized by a significant over-representation of athletes born close to the date of selection. However, there is a lack of research on RAE in world-class track and field athletes and it is not clear if this effect persists into adulthood. Thus, this study examined for the first time the prevalence and magnitude of RAE at world class level in all track and field disciplines. Birthdates of 39,590 athletes (51.6% females) ranked in the International Association of Athletics Federations top 100 official lists between 2007 and 2018 season of Under 18, Under 20, and Senior categories were collected. Under 18 and Under 20 athletes born in the first week of the year are about 2 to 3.5 times more likely to be included in the top-100 ranking than the athletes born in the last week of the year. RAE was overall larger in male compared to female athletes. In some disciplines (e.g., throwing events) RAE persists in Senior category. These findings suggest that in some disciplines relatively younger athletes may have less chances of reaching world-class performances even in the adulthood. Governing bodies should reflect upon their policies for athlete support and selection to minimize the RAE.

show abstract

Relative age effect in males, but not females, undergraduate students of sport science

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A

The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A

The Beginning of Senior Career in Team Sport Is Affected by Relative Age Effect

Relative Age Influences Performance of World-Class Track and Field Athletes Even in the Adulthood

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About