IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0122988.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relative Age Effects in Athletic Sprinting and Corrective Adjustments as a Solution for Their Removal

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Romann
  • Stephen Cobley

Abstract

Relative Age Effects (RAEs) refer to the selection and performance differentials between children and youth who are categorized in annual-age groups. In the context of Swiss 60m athletic sprinting, 7761 male athletes aged 8 – 15 years were analysed, with this study examining whether: (i) RAE prevalence changed across annual age groups and according to performance level (i.e., all athletes, Top 50%, 25% & 10%); (ii) whether the relationship between relative age and performance could be quantified, and corrective adjustments applied to test if RAEs could be removed. Part one identified that when all athletes were included, typical RAEs were evident, with smaller comparative effect sizes, and progressively reduced with older age groups. However, RAE effect sizes increased linearly according to performance level (i.e., all athletes – Top 10%) regardless of age group. In part two, all athletes born in each quartile, and within each annual age group, were entered into linear regression analyses. Results identified that an almost one year relative age difference resulted in mean expected performance differences of 10.1% at age 8, 8.4% at 9, 6.8% at 10, 6.4% at 11, 6.0% at 12, 6.3% at 13, 6.7% at 14, and 5.3% at 15. Correction adjustments were then calculated according to day, month, quarter, and year, and used to demonstrate that RAEs can be effectively removed from all performance levels, and from Swiss junior sprinting more broadly. Such procedures could hold significant implications for sport participation as well as for performance assessment, evaluation, and selection during athlete development.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Romann & Stephen Cobley, 2015. "Relative Age Effects in Athletic Sprinting and Corrective Adjustments as a Solution for Their Removal," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0122988
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122988
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122988
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0122988&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0122988?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert O Deaner & Aaron Lowen & Stephen Cobley, 2013. "Born at the Wrong Time: Selection Bias in the NHL Draft," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(2), pages 1-7, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rubén Navarro-Patón & Silvia Pueyo Villa & Juan Luis Martín-Ayala & Mariacarla Martí González & Marcos Mecías-Calvo, 2021. "Is Quarter of Birth a Risk Factor for Developmental Coordinator Disorder in Preschool Children?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-10, May.
    2. Javier Brazo-Sayavera & María Asunción Martínez-Valencia & Lisa Müller & Georgios Andronikos & Russell J J Martindale, 2018. "Relative age effects in international age group championships: A study of Spanish track and field athletes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-11, April.
    3. Alberto Ferriz-Valero & Salvador García Martínez & Javier Olaya-Cuartero & Miguel García-Jaén, 2020. "Sustainable Sport Development: The Influence of Competitive-Grouping and Relative Age on the Performance of Young Triathletes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-13, August.
    4. Paolo Riccardo Brustio & Gennaro Boccia & Paolo De Pasquale & Corrado Lupo & Alexandru Nicolae Ungureanu, 2021. "Small Relative Age Effect Appears in Professional Female Italian Team Sports," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-9, December.
    5. Alfonso de la Rubia & Christian Thue Bjørndal & Joaquín Sánchez-Molina & José María Yagüe & Jorge Lorenzo Calvo & Sergio Maroto-Izquierdo, 2020. "The relationship between the relative age effect and performance among athletes in World Handball Championships," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-21, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benito Perez-Gonzalez & Alvaro Fernandez-Luna & Daniel Castillo & Pablo Burillo, 2020. "Are European Soccer Players Worth More If They Are Born Early in the Year? Relative Age Effect on Player Market Value," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-10, May.
    2. Youwei Wang & Yuxin Chen & Yi Qian, 2018. "The Causal Link between Relative Age Effect and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from 17 Million Users across 49 Years on Taobao," NBER Working Papers 25318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Fumarco, Luca & Gibbs, Benjamin & Jarvis, Jonathan & Rossi, Giambattista, 2016. "The Relative Age Effect Reversal among NHL Elite," MPRA Paper 75691, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Tobias Berger & Frank Daumann, 2021. "Anchoring bias in the evaluation of basketball players: A closer look at NBA draft decision‐making," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(5), pages 1248-1262, July.
    5. Alessandro Pluchino & Alessio Emanuele Biondo & Andrea Rapisarda, 2018. "Talent Versus Luck: The Role Of Randomness In Success And Failure," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03n04), pages 1-31, May.
    6. Alex Bryson & Rafael Gomez & Tingting Zhang, 2017. "All-Star or Benchwarmer? Relative Age, Cohort Size and Career Success in the NHL," Sports Economics, Management, and Policy, in: Bernd Frick (ed.), Breaking the Ice, pages 57-91, Springer.
    7. Alfonso de la Rubia & Christian Thue Bjørndal & Joaquín Sánchez-Molina & José María Yagüe & Jorge Lorenzo Calvo & Sergio Maroto-Izquierdo, 2020. "The relationship between the relative age effect and performance among athletes in World Handball Championships," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-21, March.
    8. Luca Fumarco & Benjamin G Gibbs & Jonathan A Jarvis & Giambattista Rossi, 2017. "The relative age effect reversal among the National Hockey League elite," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-16, August.
    9. Sergio J Ibáñez & Aitor Mazo & Juarez Nascimento & Javier García-Rubio, 2018. "The Relative Age Effect in under-18 basketball: Effects on performance according to playing position," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-11, July.
    10. Christian Thue Bjørndal & Live S Luteberget & Kevin Till & Simen Holm, 2018. "The relative age effect in selection to international team matches in Norwegian handball," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-12, December.
    11. Justin Sims & Vittorio Addona, 2016. "Hurdle Models and Age Effects in the Major League Baseball Draft," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 17(7), pages 672-687, October.
    12. Javier Brazo-Sayavera & María Asunción Martínez-Valencia & Lisa Müller & Georgios Andronikos & Russell J J Martindale, 2018. "Relative age effects in international age group championships: A study of Spanish track and field athletes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-11, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0122988. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.