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Individual achievement in sport is often constrained by an athlete’s age relative to the peers with whom they participate. A common practice within sport and educational domains is to group youth based on their chronological ages to help promote equal competition, age appropriate instruction, and ensure participant safety. While well intended, such grouping practices can often advantage relatively older children, while disadvantaging those who are relatively younger within the same age cohort. These phenomena are known as Relative Age Effects (RAEs).
Relative Age Effects in Sport: International Perspectives includes chapters from internationally recognized scholars who have examined RAEs from different perspectives (e.g., sport, mental health and wellbeing, youth development). This new volume assists in communicating and mobilizing knowledge and research about RAEs, focusing on developing feasible and attractive solutions that capture the attention of practitioners and policy makers from sport governing bodies and creating a resource that is accessible to professionals within the sport and academic communities.
Relative Age Effects in Sport: International Perspectives is key readi ng for academics and researchers in the fields of athlete development, talent identification, coaching education, health and wellbeing, mental health and related disciplines, whilst also of interest to sport industry professionals such as coaches and policy makers.
Jess C. Dixon is Head of the Department of Kinesiology and an Associate Professor of Sport Management at the University of Windsor, Canada. His primary research and scholarly interests are in the areas of strategic management in sport, executive leadership and human resource management in sport, and sport management pedagogy. He has also published extensively about relative age effects over the past decade. His research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Sport Canada Research Initiative (SCRI), and the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM).
Sean Horton is a Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor, Canada. Sean’s research interests lie primarily in the area of skill acquisition and expert performance, both in young people and as individuals age, along with various psychosocial components of sport and physical activity participation. His research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Laura Chittle is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at t he University of Windsor, Canada. She is funded by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, a Sport Canada Research Initiative Grant, and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Her previous work examined the moderating impact of academic timing on relative age effect patterns within intercollegiate sport, while her current dissertation studies pertain to evaluating the role that relative age has on athlete leadership development and positive youth development in sport.
Joe Baker is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, Canada. His research examines the varying factors affecting skill acquisition and maintenance across the lifespan, from issues of high-performance athlete development to predictors of successful aging. He has held visiting researcher positions at universities around the world and is the author/editor of 9 books, 4 journal special issues and more than 200 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. He is internationally recognized as a world leader on the science of athlete development.
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Relative Age Effects in Sport
International Perspectives
Edited by Jess C. Dixon, Sean Horton,
Laura Chittle, and Joe Baker
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1
JESS
C. DIXON, LAURA CHITTLE, JOE BAKER, AND SEAN HORTON
PAULA E. BARNSLEY, ROGER H. BARNSLEY, AND ANGUS H. THOMPSON 3 Antecedents
DAVID J. HANCOCK
JÖRG SCHORER, INGO RODEN, DIRK BÜSCH, AND IRENE FABER
7
NICK WATTIE AND JOE BAKER
SRDJAN LEMEZ , JESSICA FRASER-THOMAS , AND NICK WATTIE
8 Tackling an Age-Old Dilemma among Student-Athletes: Academic Timing and Relative Age Effects 83
LAURA
CHITTLE, SEAN HORTON, AND JESS C. DIXON
9 Relative Age Effects in Youth and Elite Sport: What Have We Learned After 20 Years of Research? 98
WERNER F. HELSEN , AND JANET STARKES
10 Approaches to Help Coaches and Talent Scouts Overcome Relative Age Effects 117
DAVID MANN
11 Re-balancing the Relative Age Effect Scales: Metaanalytical Trends, Causes, and Corrective Adjustment Procedures as a Solution 136
STEPHEN COBLEY , SHAUN ABBOTT , KYLIE MOULDS , CLORINDA HOGAN , AND MICHAEL ROMANN
12 Concluding Thoughts and Future Research on Relative Age Effects in Sport 154
JOE BAKER , LAURA CHITTLE , SEAN HORTON , AND JESS C. DIXON
1.1 Monthly birth distribution of horses that competed in “Triple Crown” events from 2004 through 2005 (N = 351) 3
1.2 Presenters and hosts of Relative Age Effects: An International Conference 5
2.1 Distribution of birth months of OHL and WHL hockey players 15
2.2 The relationship between birthdates and participation rates in minor hockey irrespective of age 16
2.3 The relationship between birthdates and competitive “tier” among minor hockey players 17
2.4 Comparison of football and hockey player distribution across eligibility-year birth-quarters 19
4.1 Classification of varying Relative Age Effects (adapted from Schorer et al., 2013) 36
4.2 Birth quartile distribution of handball players from a one-year age group (adapted from Schorer et al., 2009) 40
8.1 Overall birth distribution by quartile 86
8.2 On-time birth distribution by quartile 87
8.3 Delayed birth distribution by quartile 87
8.4 Overall birth distribution by quartile 89
8.5 On-time birth distribution by quartile 90
8.6 Delayed birth distribution by quartile 90
9.1 How to calculate biological birth date from an average growth curve for a given population (Helsen & Ooms, 2019) 107
10.1 Taxonomy of different approaches designed to reduce RAEs when performance is evaluated subjectively 119
10.2 Selection biases of scouts when ranking the potential of young footballers with varying amounts of information about the relative ages of the players line redraw 122
10.3 Correlations between player characteristics and coach ratings of U15 boys field hockey players at a national selection day 126
x Figures
11.1 Basic conceptual diagram summarizing the maturation-selection hypothesis
11.2 The relationship between chronological age and percentage of adult height attained (PAS%; indicator of maturity status) according to relative age quartile (i.e. quartile 1 [solid] v 4 [dotted])
11.3 Relative age (quartile) distribution of participants who constituted the “Top 10%” of sprint performance within the under 9 and 15 age groups
11.4 Relative age distribution of raw and correctively adjusted swim times according to performance categories for the under 14-year-old age group (adapted from Cobley et al., 2019)
139
141
145
147
2.1 Month of birth: National Hockey League players, 1982–1983 season
5.1 Sports examined in female RAE studies
9.1 Overview of the potential solutions to reduce the relative age and late maturity effects
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Contributors
Shaun Abbott, M.Ph., is a Ph.D. candidate in Exercise and Sport Science in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney (Australia). In collaboration with Swimming Australia, Shaun is investigating key issues in athlete development, specifically the influence of growth and maturation on talent development in youth athletes. Shaun is also a former swimmer.
Joe Baker is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, Canada. His research examines the varying factors affecting skill acquisition and maintenance across the lifespan, from issues of high-performance athlete development to predictors of successful aging. He is internationally recognized as a world leader on the science of athlete development.
Paula E. Barnsley, whose observations led to the discovery of Relat ive Age Effects (RAEs), holds a B.A. and an M.Ed. in Educational Psychology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and for 15 years she was a registered psychologist in Alberta. She became a lawyer after completing an LL.B. at Dalhousie University (1988) and an LL.M. at The University of British Columbia (1998).
Roger H. Barnsley holds a B.A. (UVIC) and an M.A. and Ph.D. (McGill) i n Psychology. His academic career included five Canadian universities. He was the Founding President (Emeritus) of Thompson Rivers University, is a fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association (1984), and is a recipient of the British Columbia Community Achievement Award (2012) and The Order of British Columbia (2014).
Dirk Büsch, Ph.D., is a professor of sport and training science at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg in Germany. He is interested in strength training, talent in sport, transfer in sport, and handball.
Laura Chittle is a doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. She is currently funded by a JosephArmand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, a Sport Canada Research Initiative Grant, and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Her
dissertation studies pertain to evaluating the role that relative age has on athlete leadership development and positive youth development in sport.
Stephen Cobley, Ph.D., CPsychol, is an associate professor in the Facu lty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney (Australia). His research examines the developmental factors that facilitate or inhibit learning and performance from a bio-ecological and multidisciplinary perspective. Steve has worked with multiple sport organizations helping evaluate and improve athlete development programs and policy.
Jess C. Dixon is head of the Department of Kinesiology and associate professor of Sport Management at the University of Windsor. His primary research and scholarly interests are in the areas of strategic management in sport, executive leadership and human resource management in sport, and sport management pedagogy. He has also published extensively about Relative Age Effects over the past decade.
Irene Faber, Ph.D., is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Sport Science Institute at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg (Germany) and part of the International Table Tennis Federation’s Sport Science and Medical Committee. Her research focusses on talent identification and development in youth sports with a specific interest in table tennis and other racquet sports.
Jessica Fraser-Thomas is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focusses on children and youths’ development through sport –particularly how psychosocial and contextual factors (i.e. coaches, family, peers, culture) influence sport trajectories and outcomes (e.g. long-term participation, performance, positive development).
David J. Hancock is an associate professor in the School of Human K inetics and Recreation at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He teaches Sport Psychology, Coaching, Sport Sociology, and Motor Development. David’s research interests include relative age/birthplace effects, the psychology of sport officials, and youth physical activity. He also offers mental performance consultation for athletes and sport officials.
Werner F. Helsen is professor in the Movement Sciences Department at K U Leuven. His research interests include (i) expert perception and performance, (ii) talent detection and selection, and (iii) load monitoring in team sports and association football, particularly. Recently, Google Scholar showed 8950 citations, H-index= 47, i10-index=102 . Since 1999, he has played a prominent role in UEFA as a sports scientist and training expert.
Contributors xv
Clorinda Hogan, BHlthSc (Sp&ExSc), is a Master of Applied Science candidate in Exercise and Sport Science in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney (Australia). Aligned with a background in swimming, Clorinda’s research interests reside within athlete development in youth swimming.
Sean Horton is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. Sean’s research interests lie primarily in the area of skill acquisition and expert performance, both in young people and as individuals age, along with various psychosocial components of sport and physical activity participation.
Srdjan Lemez is an assistant professor in the Kinesiology and Health Promotion Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His research program explores health, wellness, and development using the biopsychosocial framework, with a specific focus on (i) epidemiology (i.e. mortality/morbidity in athletes), (ii) psychosocial outcomes associated with sport participation (e.g. self-identity, participation biases in youth sport), and (iii) skill acquisition.
David Mann is associate professor of Human Movement Sciences at Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands. His research examines visual-motor skill acquisition: understanding the visual-motor behaviour of skilled athletes and leveraging that to enhance the development of young athletes. More recently, he has also examined talent identification to improve the way that sport teams and federations identify talent.
Kylie Moulds, M.Sc./BBeh.Sc., is a Ph.D. candidate in Exercise and Sport Science in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at The University of Sydney (Australia). Kylie is a former tennis coach at the Australian Institute of Sport and has been involved with athlete development programmes for several national sports. Kylie’s research interests examine athlete development issues from psychosocial perspectives.
Ingo Roden, Ph.D., is working as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Educational Psychology at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany. His main research focusses on transfer, educational sciences, working memory, and within pedagogy, especially classroom research.
Michael Romann , Ph.D., is head of training science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport Magglingen, Switzerland. His areas of scientific interest and expertise examine talent selection and talent development with a multidimensional perspective. His research and applied works have led to the implementation of new indicators in talent selection instruments and talent development frameworks in Switzerland.
xvi Contributors
Jörg Schorer, Ph.D., is a professor for sport and movement science at t he Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg in Germany. His research focusses on elite performance over the lifespan, talent in sport, sensory-motor learning, and perception in sport.
Kristy Smith graduated with a Ph.D. from the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. Her previous work has examined the impact of relative age on female sport participation across the developmental spectrum at various levels of competition. She completed a systematic review and meta-analysis of RAEs in female sport.
Janet Starkes is a professor emerita, McMaster University. She has edited t wo books and has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and presentations. She is known for her work on sport and surgical expertise, and visual control of movement. Her work is funded by NSERC, SSHRC, CFI, CIHR, and Sport Canada. She has been a keynote speaker 32 times, in 11 different countries, and chair of McMaster Kinesiology. She is a past-President of SCAPPS and NASPSPA. She is SCAPPS’s only female fellow and an international fellow of the NAK.
Angus H. (Gus) Thompson, Ph.D. (London), has worked as a clinician, executive, and researcher. His responsibilities included VP, Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention; Member, World Psychiatric Association’s Stigma Campaign; Director, Alberta Mental Health Research Fund; Alberta Representative, Child Mental Health Federal Working Group; and co-author, Alberta’s Psychology Profession Act. He is a recipient of the Award in Epidemiology from the Canadian Academy of Psychiatric Epidemiology/Canadian Psychiatric Association in 2013.
Nick Wattie is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ontario Tech University. His research examines constraints on talent identification and development in sport, sport expertise, and skill acquisition, as well as the health outcomes associated with sport participation. He is also co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Talent Identification and Development in Sport.
Patricia (Patti) Weir is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at t he University of Windsor. Her research interests include identifying changes in motor performance with age, factors that contribute to successful aging, and factors that influence the development of expertise across the lifespan. Since 2012, she has been the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
1 Serendipity Strikes
Jess C. Dixon, Laura Chittle, Joe Baker, and Sean Horton
Human development is often constrained by the most curious of influences. For example, sport is often promoted as the ultimate egalitarian environment. However, individual achievement in sport is often constrained by an athlete’s age relative to the peers with whom they may be participating. A common practice within sport and educational domains is to group youth based on their chronological ages to help promote equal competition, age-appropriate instruction, and ensure participant safety (e.g. Baker, Schorer, & Cobley, 2010). The term “relative age” describes the variation in age among individuals grouped together based on an arbitrarily determined cut-off date. For instance, when using a January 1st cut-off date to group athletes, the relatively oldest children commencing sport at five years of age will, in some cases, be nearly 20% older than their relatively younger peers (Dixon, Horton, & Weir, 2011). While well intended, such grouping policies can inadvertently advantage those born immediately after a cut-off date, while disadvantaging those who are relatively younger within the same cohort – neither of which are earned nor deserved. These phenomena are commonly known as Relative Age Effects (RAEs; Barnsley, Thompson, & Barnsley, 1985).
Although not explicitly referred to as such, RAEs were first identified in the education system more than half a century ago (Armstrong, 1966; Freyman, 1965). Subsequent research in this context has demonstrated significant differences in the outcomes of relatively younger and older individuals on the basis of achievement scores (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006; Smith, 2009), selection to “gifted” programmes (Cobley, Baker, Wattie, & McKenna, 2009b), leadership opportunities (Dhuey & Lipscomb, 2008), attending (Bedard & Dhuey, 2006) or completing college (Dhuey, Figlio, Karbownik, & Roth, 2019), (mis)diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Elder, 2010; Evans, Morrill, & Parente, 2010), risk of youth suicide (Thompson, Barnsley, & Dyck, 1999), and incarceration for juvenile crimes (Dhuey et al., 2019). Unfortunately, the consequences associated with relative age are not limited to education; there are important parallels that exist in sporting contexts as well. Despite youth sport providing an excellent opportunity for children to develop physical well-being and psychosocial (e.g. cooperation,
Jess C. Dixon et al.
discipline, leadership) and motor skills (Côté & Fraser-Thomas, 2007), R AEs have been demonstrated to both positively and negatively affect athletes in a number of sports, across many competitive levels (Cobley, Baker, Wattie, & McKenna, 2009a; Smith, Weir, Till, Romann, & Cobley, 2018). While there is a growing body of evidence supporting the systematic bias associated with RAEs in sport (which are discussed at length within the subsequent chapters), the proposed solutions to eliminate or minimize them (see Chapters 9–11 for a thorough discussion of these) seem to be administratively challenging and have failed to gain sufficient traction by sport governing bodies. In the absence of practicable solutions, RAEs continue to impact the experiences of young athletes in a variety of unintended and often misunderstood ways.
Over the past two decades, RAEs have gained considerable attention i n popular press books such as Outliers: The Story of Success (Gladwell, 2008) and SuperFreakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2009). References to RAEs have also appeared in sport-specific periodicals and trade publications like Sports Illustrated (Levy, 2011), The Hockey News (Shuker, 2018), and FIBA Assist Magazine (Esteva, Drobnic, Puigdellivol, & Serratosa, 2006) and on journalistic television programmes including 60 Minutes (CBS Interactive, 2012). As the general population has become increasingly aware of the consequences of RAEs, sport researchers, practitioners, and policy makers are increasingly pressured to rectify these biases through policy changes and interventions. However, to date, the proposed interventions have not amounted to much in terms of solving the RAE problem (although some of the ideas discussed in Chapters 9–11 show considerable promise). In the absence of practical solutions and a willingness to implement them, some people are taking matters into their own hands and are actively trying to game the system for their personal benefit. For instance, some researchers (e.g. Deming & Dynarski, 2008) have demonstrated that parents may be intentionally holding their children back a year from starting kindergarten to ensure they are relatively older than their classmates (referred to as “academic redshirting”). And while there is little empirical evidence of its widespread occurrence (see Dickert-Conlin & Elder, 2010), there is plenty of anecdotal support for the “suburban legend” that some parents plan their pregnancies so that children will be born shortly after a cut-off date.
The sport of thoroughbred horse racing provides an instructive exa mple of what happens when these ideas and actions are taken to their logical/rational extremes. Within thoroughbred horse racing, captive breeding takes place for a specific purpose, the results of which can be highly lucrative. In fact, the stud rights for American Pharoah, winner of the prestigious “Triple Crown” of horse racing in 2015, were estimated to yield upwards of $30 million to its owners over the course of the five-month breeding season (Drape, 2016). This was on top of the $8.7 million that American Pharoah accumulated in prize money from
Frequency of Births
Month of Birth
Figure 1.1 Monthly birth distribution of horses that competed in “Triple Crown” events from 2004 through 2005 (N = 351). Adapted from Chittle, L., Horton, S., & Dixon, J. C. (2016). What the Triple Crown can teach us about success in school and sports. Talent Development & Excellence, 8(2), 33–40.
his performances on the racetrack (Tuttle, 2018). Figure 1.1 displays the d istribution of births among the 351 horses that competed in these Triple Crown events from 2004 through 2015. You can see that nearly 65% of these horses were born in the first three months of the year and that not a single horse was born in the months of July through December. This birth distribution, which is significantly different from what we would encounter in the wild, supports anecdotal claims that breeders intentionally plan the births of racehorses to occur soon after January 1st, while trying to ensure they are not born prematurely (i.e. at the end of December). Such breeding tactics are employed to maximize size and maturity advantages over other horses competing in the same age classification (Chittle, Horton, & Dixon, 2016). Based on the evidence presented in this study, we caution sport and educational practitioners and policy makers about the implications of leaving people to their own devices. “A competitive society with massive rewards for success is likely to exacerbate these ‘family planning’ trends and reinforce social inequalities that already exist within our sport and education systems” (Chittle et al., 2016, pp. 37–38).
Serendipity
The Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.) defines serendipity as “the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance.” Similarly, The Oxford Dictionary (n.d.) defines this term as “the occurrence and development
of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” Specific to RAEs, serendipity relates to the chance involved in one’s birth date falling on one side or the other of an arbitrary cut-off date. Serendipity also explains how RAEs came to be understood in the sporting realm, and how this book, and the 2018 conference that preceded it, came to be.
Many of us who are authoring chapters in this book teach at the university level, and these classes often incorporate units on youth development and RAEs. One of the authors of this chapter (Sean Horton) has been teaching about RAEs for over a decade and invariably introduces students to the topic with the work of Roger Barnsley, Gus Thompson, and Paula Barnsley, who pioneered research in this area and have authored the next chapter in this text. The idea for this book originated with a chance encounter on a ski lift in the winter of 2015. Sean, on a sabbatical at the time, was skiing at Sun Peaks (in British Colombia, Canada) and at one point in the day rode up the chairlift with two fellow skiers. Sean became particularly intrigued by one of them, who described a lengthy career in academia, with stops in a number of universities across Canada, including Memorial University in Newfoundland, The University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and ultimately as the president of Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Colombia. They arrived at the top of the mountain, and if you are a skier you know this can be a fairly abrupt end to a conversation, so they wished each other a good day of skiing and went off in different directions. Names were not exchanged. On Sean’s very next ride up the chairlift, again with a complete stranger, the conversation turned to the topic of universities; this gentleman had a son starting his first year of post-secondary education. Sean mentioned that he had just ridden the chairlift with the former president of Thompson Rivers, to which this gentleman responded, “Oh, Roger Barnsley?”
After a futile search of the mountain the rest of the day, and an equally f utile stalking expedition on social media, Sean, by telling this story ad nauseum, eventually told someone who knew someone who knew Roger Barnsley. A month later, Sean was having lunch with Roger and Gus Thompson on Vancouver Island, where they were both enjoying retirement and which was, coincidentally, Sean’s next stop on his sabbatical tour of Canada. During lunch, Roger suggested that the time was right for a text devoted to RAEs. Thus, this book is a result of one, or really two, serendipitous conversations on a ski lift.1
To build momentum for the book, we (i.e. the authors of this chapter) hosted the first international conference on RAEs featuring many of the field’s leading researchers (see Figure 1.2), which was held in the fall of 2018 on the campus of York University in Toronto, Ontario, and was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. York University and the University of Windsor provided additional funding and in-kind support for this initiative. As a legacy of
Figure 1.2 Presenters and hosts of Relative Age Effects: An International Conference. Back row (L to R): Laura Chittle, Jess C. Dixon, Kristy Smith, Jörg Schorer, Patti Weir, David Hancock, Srdjan Lemez, Nick Wattie, David Mann, Jessica Fraser-Thomas, Joe Baker, and Sean Horton. Front row: Stephen Cobley, Gus Thompson, Paula Barnsley, Roger Barnsley, and Werner Helsen.
this conference, a website was established where we continue to house t he conference abstracts and links to the conference social media feeds, which feature some archived videos of the presentations that were delivered. Like the conference, and this book, we hope the website will assist researchers in communicating their findings with sport administrators and policy makers in hopes of reducing (and, hopefully, eliminating) the detrimental impacts of RAEs. We invite you to visit https://scholar. uwindsor.ca/rae-conference/ to learn more about our ongoing research activities.
Chapter Summaries
We have divided this book into three distinct sections. The first section, comprising Chapters 2–5, provides readers with a broad foundation of RAEs and their origins. Chapter 2 is written by the pioneers of RAEs, Paula and Roger Barnsley, and their long-time research partner, Gus Thompson. Paula and Roger describe their attendance at a Western
Jess C. Dixon et al.
Hockey League (a league for elite male junior hockey players in Canada) game in 1983, and Paula’s astute observation while perusing the game programme that the majority of the players on the ice that evening were born early in the calendar year. This observation launched their investigations into relative age research, and they suggest that their previous work in early childhood development had essentially primed them for these discoveries. Their initial articles on RAEs suggested a consistent 40-30-20-10 birth distribution across competitive sports, in which 40% of participants were born in the first three months after the cut-off date, 30% in the second quartile, 20% in the third, with the fourth quartile consisting of just 10% of the participants.
In Chapter 3, David J. Hancock introduces readers to the mechanisms t hat contribute to the establishment of RAEs in sport, namely, sport structures, physical development, and social agents. Each mechanism is described in sufficient detail as to inform readers about how they may unintentionally impact young athletes, leading some to reach the pinnacle of sporting success, while discouraging others from participating and ultimately dropping out of sport. Only by understanding the mechanisms by which RAEs come to be present in sport can we identify potential solutions for overcoming them.
As noted by Jörg Schorer, Ingo Roden, Dirk Büsch, and Irene Faber in Chapter 4, RAEs have traditionally been examined in a cross- sectional manner, which limits our understanding of their nuances. These authors consider the ecology of human development in proposing that individual, task, and environmental constraints interactively contribute to the establishment and perpetuation of RAEs in sport. From there, the authors explain how the influence of these constraints can change over time, thus necessitating longitudinal research designs to better understand the existence and size of RAEs in different contexts. Finally, these authors posit that there are many different “effects” attributed to relative age (consequent to the various grouping policies employed by sport organizations) and that RAEs may not be a problem in elite sports.
In Chapter 5, Nick Wattie and Joe Baker provide an overview of RAEs i n female sport, which have been understudied compared to research specific to males. One intriguing component of RAEs in female populations is the over-representation that is often seen in the second quartile, compared to the traditional quartile one over-representation (and hence, a negative linear trend) normally seen in the male data.
The second section of the book, made up of Chapters 6–8, introduces readers to some of the unintended consequences of RAEs. Specific topics include early sport specialization and dropout, the underdog hypothesis, Academic Timing (AT), and how RAEs interact, often in unexpected ways, with each of these concepts. In Chapter 6, Srdjan Lemez, Jessica Fraser-Thomas, and Nick Wattie describe how RAEs leave an important “imprint” on the psychosocial development of youth in both sport
Serendipity Strikes 7 and educational contexts. The authors review research that shows how R AEs are implicated when children are placed into gifted programmes and into remedial educational streams. In addition, RAEs influence the likelihood of children staying involved in sport, and even their likelihood of being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In Chapter 7, Kristy Smith and Patti Weir review the “underdog hypothesis,” and the phenomenon of the relatively youngest thriving at the very highest levels of sport. These athletes have survived a system that is aligned against them in many respects, and perhaps as a direct result, achieve beyond their peers at the pinnacle in certain sports. The hypothesized reasons for this are complex but relate, in part, to “structured trauma.” Athletes who are talented and resilient enough to survive a system in which they are disadvantaged can potentially benefit in the long term.
In Chapter 8, Laura Chittle, Sean Horton, and Jess C. Dixon review t he interrelationship between RAEs and AT. Glamser and Marciani introduced the notion of AT in 1992, after which it lay dormant until 2015 when it was resurrected by the authors as an explanation for the often-muted nature of RAEs at the intercollegiate level, at least at first glance. Accounting for AT reveals RAEs that are frequently dramatic in intercollegiate sport. The university sport system in North America may have, albeit unwittingly, found a potential solution to RAEs by allowing athletes to “delay” their participation through “redshirting” and other means. AT is crucial to illuminating the underlying trends within RAEs that may have otherwise gone unnoticed in the data.
This leads readers into Section 3 (Chapters 9–11), which is focussed on solutions to RAEs. Specifically, Chapter 9, authored by Werner F. Helsen and Janet Starkes, reflects on research conducted over the past 20 years, coinciding with their comprehensive examination of RAEs in association football (Helsen, Starkes, & Van Winckel, 1998). From this literature, 11 potential solutions to RAEs are identified and thoughtfully considered with respect to their perceived advantages and disadvantages. These authors contend that despite the increasing number of studies and data collected, very little progress has been made in actually diminishing the effects of relative age.
One of the most promising interventions for reducing RAEs in systems where athletic performance is judged by scouts and talent experts is based on the work of David Mann and his colleagues. In Chapter 10, Mann provides a taxonomy of approaches that can be employed to reduce relative age bias when subjectively evaluating talent. In particular, he explains the merits of using age-ordered shirt numbering to help mitigate both direct and indirect RAEs in a variety of team sport contexts and countries. This chapter concludes with a call for additional field and experimental research to test the efficacy of the various interventions that have been proposed in the literature.
In Chapter 11, Stephen Cobley, Shaun Abbott, Kylie Moulds, Clorinda Hogan, and Michael Romann present their work on corrective adjustive procedures (CAPs). Much like handicapping in golf, which accounts for skill differences between players allowing them to compete against each other, CAPs account for age differences between sporting participants, thereby facilitating equitable competition. The authors provide evidence for how CAPs can reduce, or even eliminate, age-related differences in individual sports such as sprinting and swimming. This corrective adjustment technique is now being applied to numerous Australian swimming events, with potential for its application across other youth-sport contexts.
Finally, in the concluding chapter (Chapter 12), we draw important i nferences from our review of the literature and stress that collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers is essential to reduce (and hopefully eliminate) the impact of RAEs on our sport systems. We also provide direction for future research on RAEs, highlighting a need for improved research designs and measurement approaches, as well as stronger theoretical and conceptual frameworks to guide these studies. While prior work has been invaluable for describing RAEs and the contexts from which they arise, future work needs to move beyond description to understanding the precise mechanisms driving these effects and their developmental consequences.
Irony
In addition to serendipity, there is another theme associated with RAEs worthy of mention – that of irony. Grouping children by age (and by level, as it occurs in competitive sport) through the imposition of cut-off dates is an attempt to implement a system that is fair, thereby providing equal opportunity for all children to participate and excel. The irony lies in the unintended consequences of these arbitrary cut-off dates. The data suggest that sporting and educational institutions have actually created systems in which one’s birthday plays an outsized role in opportunities garnered and ultimate chances of success across various domains. In an attempt to develop a meritocracy, we (i.e. society fairly broadly) have inadvertently undermined its development, at least to some extent.
Consequently, people are left to their own devices to make the systems work for them (e.g. parental “family planning,” redshirting, and other forms of “delay”). At the same time, other “solutions” to RAEs are still in their infancy in terms of research and implementation. Ultimately, the goal of these interventions, which are highlighted in Chapters 9–11, is to lessen the effects of serendipity and move towards achieving a system that organizations intended in the first place, that is, one that provides an equal opportunity for all.
Conclusion
To conclude this introductory chapter, we revisit the Barnsleys’ attendance at a 1983 Western Junior Hockey league game, during which Paula’s careful reading of the programme effectively launched their research into RAEs. More than 35 years have elapsed since that night, and while we have learned a tremendous amount about RAEs in that period of time, we suggest (a notion supported by various chapters in this text) that despite this accumulated knowledge, little has changed. To illustrate with another, more recent example from Canadian major junior hockey, this time from the Ontario Hockey League, its entry draft in 2019 attracted considerable attention due to the selection of Shane Wright as the number one pick. Wright applied for, and was granted, special status to be drafted underage as a 15-year-old and was subsequently selected first overall by the Kingston Frontenacs. Wright was the lone player born in 2004 among the 303 draftees, with the vast majority of the remaining players born in 2003, and a handful born in 2002. What received comparatively little attention was his actual date of birth – January 5th. Notably, if Shane Wright had been born six days earlier, he would have been eligible for the 2019 draft without requiring special status. Wright was not the only top draft pick with a January birthday. In fact, the second player drafted in 2019 also had a January 5th birthday. The third pick was born on January 21st. The fourth pick was born in February, while the fifth was born on January 30th. Five of the first seven players drafted were born in January, and six of the seven were born in the first 40 days of the calendar year. 2
To expand on this particular example using birth quartiles, which have been utilized so often in RAE research (yet are not without problems, see Chapter 5), of the top 50 players drafted, 23 were born in quartile 1, 16 were born in quartile 2, 7 in quartile 3, and 4 in quartile 4. This breakdown roughly corresponds to Barnsley et al.’s 40-30-20-10 “rule” that they discuss in Chapter 2, although in this particular case, it is slightly more extreme (by percentage, 46, 32, 14, 8).
After more than three and a half decades of research, we know a lot more about the RAE phenomenon, but clearly there is still more work to do. Our hope is that this book will inspire sport researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to move beyond serendipity to address the inequities associated with RAEs that appear to be firmly entrenched in not just junior hockey, but across so many areas of youth development.
Notes
1 The fateful, slightly comedic nature of their meeting somewhat mirrors the plot of the 2001 film entitled, rather appropriately, Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale.
2 Full 2019 draft results can be found at https://ontariohockeyleague.com/ draft/2019.
References
Armstrong, H. G. (1966). A comparison of the performance of summer and autumn-born children at eleven and sixteen. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 36 , 72–76.
Baker, J., Schorer, J., & Cobley, S. (2010). Relative age effects: An inevitable consequence of elite sport? Sportwissenschaft, 40 (1), 26–30.
Barnsley, R. H., Thompson, A. H., & Barnsley, P. E. (1985). Hockey success a nd birthdate: The RAE. Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, 51, 23–28.
Bedard, K., & Dhuey, E. (2006). The persistence of early childhood maturity: I nternational evidence of long-run age effects. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(4), 1437–1474.
Chittle, L., Horton, S., & Dixon, J. C. (2016). What the Triple Crown can teach us about success in school and sports. Talent Development & Excellence, 8(2), 33–40.
Cobley, S., Baker, J., Wattie, N., & McKenna, J. M. (2009a). Annual ageg rouping and athlete development: A meta-analytic review of relative age effects in sport. Sports Medicine, 39(3), 235–256.
Cobley, S., Baker, J., Wattie, N., & McKenna, J. M. (2009b). How pervasive a re relative age effects in secondary school education? Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(2), 520–528.
Côté, J., & Fraser-Thomas, J. (2007). Youth involvement in sport. In P. R. E. C rocker (Ed.), Introduction to sport psychology: A Canadian perspective (pp. 266–294). Toronto, ON: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Deming, J. D., & Dynarski, S. (2008). The lengthening of childhood. Journal of E conomic Perspectives, 22(3), 71–92.
Dhuey, E., Figlio, D., Karbownik, K., & Roth, J. (2019). School starting age and cognitive development. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 38(3), 538–578.
Dhuey, E., & Lipscomb, S. (2008). What makes a leader? Relative age and high s chool leadership. Economics of Education Review, 27, 173–183.
Dickert-Conlin, S., & Elder, T. (2010). Suburban legend: School cutoff dates a nd the timing of births. Economics of Education Review, 29, 826–841.
Dixon, J. C., Horton, S., & Weir, P. (2011). Relative age effects: Implications for leadership development. International Journal of Sport and Society, 2(2), 1–15.
Drape, J. (2016, May 3). American Pharoah is already a champion at the stud life, too. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes. com/2016/05/04/sports/horse-racing/american-pharoah-already-achampionat-the-stud-life-too.html?emc=eta1&_r=0.
Elder, T. (2010). The importance of relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: Evidence based on exact birth dates. Journal of Health Economics, 29(5), 641–656.
Evans, W. N., Morrill, M. S., & Parente, S. T. (2010). Measuring inappropriate medical diagnosis and treatment in survey data. The case of ADHD among school-age children. Journal of Health Economics, 29(5), 657–673.
Freyman, R. (1965). Further evidence on the effect of date of birth on subsequent school performance. Educational Research, 8, 58–64.
Helsen, W. F., Starkes, J. L., & Van Winckel, J. (1998). The influence of relative age on success and dropout in male soccer players. American Journal of Human Biology, 10, 791–798.
Serendipity. (n.d.). In The Cambridge online dictionary. Retrieved from https:// dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/serendipity.
Serendipity. (n.d.). In The Lexico online dictionary (powered by Oxford). Ret rieved from https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/serendipity.
Smith, J. (2009). Can regression discontinuity help answer an age-old question i n education? The effect of age on elementary and secondary school achievement. The B. E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 9(1), 1–28.
Smith, K. L., & Weir, P. L. (2017). An examination of relative age and athlete d ropout in female developmental soccer. Journal of Exercise, Movement, and Sports (A SCAPPS Publication), 49(1). Retrieved from https://www.scapps. org/jems/index.php/1/article/view/1629
Smith, K. L., Weir, P. L., Till, K., Romann, M., & Cobley, S. (2018). Relative age effects across and within female sport contexts: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 48(6), 1451–1478.
Thompson, A. H., Barnsley, R. H., & Dyck, R. J. (1999). A new factor in youth suicide: The relative age effect. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 44(1), 82–85.
Tuttle, B. (2018, June 9). Here’s how much money Justify’s owners will get for w inning the 2018 Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown. Retrieved from http:// money.com/money/5304904/2018-belmont-stakes-winner-purse-money/.
2 Relative Age Effects Early Studies
Paula E. Barnsley, Roger H. Barnsley, and Angus H. Thompson
The Background
Relative Age Effect (RAE) research, as it relates to athletic and sports achievement, received notable and prolonged public attention following its academic appearance in the 1980s. A feature in Psychology Today amplified its public visibility a few years later, and its impact expanded dramatically when Malcolm Gladwell published Outliers: The Story of Success in 2008. What began as interesting, but largely ignored academic findings in the 1980s , have now developed into a mainstream focus among a number of sports psychologists and kinesiologists, with significant contributions being provided by scholars in education, economics, and other areas of psychology. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight our early RAE research through our first four studies covering, in order, elite hockey (Barnsley, Thompson, & Barnsley, 1985), minor hockey (Barnsley & Thompson, 1988), baseball (Thompson, Barnsley, & Stebelsky, 1991), and soccer (Barnsley, Thompson, & Legault, 1992). These studies provide the foundation for the current RAE research and continue to enjoy large and growing recognition as evidenced by the combined citations for these four articles that are reported at over 1,100 by Google Scholar and over 600 by ResearchGate.
The genesis for our research into RAEs began about 1972. Roger and Paula were then working at the Institute for Research in Human Abilities at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Supported by a grant from the Newfoundland Department of Health, they were assessing and recommending specialized teaching programmes for children who were achieving below their grade level and thought to have a learning disability. From the beginning, Paula observed that a noticeable number of the children who had been referred for assessment were born late in the school year and thus were younger than their grade cohort. Although their school achievement was below grade level, adjusting the assessment results for differences in age revealed average or above-average cognitive abilities.
At this time, Paula and Roger were of the view that the simple answer may be that these children, by virtue of being younger, were both less
mature and less experienced, and realistically then, would have lower achievement. A review of the literature identified a number of studies that demonstrated that the consequence of early school entrance could result in grade failure or grade retention, low reading achievement, and generally low educational attainment. Further, it was shown that these effects could have long-term consequences as demonstrated by achievement in British A level and O level examinations and subsequent participation rate at university (Jinks, 1964; Sutton, 1967). Parenthetically, the explanation that has generally been put forward for these findings resides in the lack of maturity and readiness of the younger students, while neither the concept of “relative age” nor its attributes were identified or recognized.
In the early 1970s, Gus was employed as a clinical psychologist by A lberta Mental Health Services. Occasionally, his professional practice brought parental requests for preschool assessments of children who were short of the cut-off birthdate for school entry. Generally, the parents’ hope was to have their child admitted early into grade one, making them the youngest in the class. Most psychologists were uncomfortable with this, in part because of the reliance on IQ findings which did not have adequate forecasting norms, and partly on the belief that social maturity would be at least as important but perhaps more difficult to pinpoint. Most applications resulted in early school entry, and while the psychologists involved worried about how well children would handle schooling and the school environment because of their younger age, the concept of relative age as a systemic force had not been included in our clinical system’s operational policies.
In 1973, Paula and Roger moved to Southern Alberta where Paula resumed her work as a school psychologist and Roger joined the Department of Psychology at The University of Lethbridge. What brought them back to thinking about the matter of “younger” children’s lower achievements was that their two sons began playing hockey. As with school, children in minor or youth hockey are grouped by age. For example, all children that turn eight years of age within the range of January 1 to December 31 (the “hockey year”) will play hockey together as eight-year-olds. Their sons were born in late September and early October. Roger and Paula noted that the older, and often larger, boys on their teams appeared to be the more skilled players. They speculated that their sons might have been better performers had they been born in January.
Discovering RAEs
In 1983, the Barnsleys went to see a Junior A Lethbridge Broncos (now the Swift Current Broncos) hockey game. While reading the game programme, Paula noticed the predominance of players born early in the
Paula E. Barnsley et al.
calendar year. The birthdates were so biased that Roger and Paula wondered if this was a unique cohort to Lethbridge, or whether birthdates of other successful hockey players would also demonstrate this highly skewed distribution. When they got home that evening, they constructed a frequency distribution of the birth months of players in the National Hockey League (NHL) listed in the then current Hockey News Yearbook (Halpin, 1983). The results can be seen in Table 2.1 and clearly demonstrate a birthday bias.
About this time, Gus and Roger found themselves jointly working on a G overnment Task Force on Family Crisis for Mental Health Alberta. Following on Paula’s discovery, Roger mentioned her observation to Gus and invited him to get involved. In our discussions, we thought that an examination of Junior A hockey data would be valuable. John Chapman, the Lethbridge Broncos head coach, gave us the birthdates of all Western Hockey League and Ontario Hockey League players. The analyses of their birth months and a summary of these data can be found in Figure 2.1. These findings proved to be even more dramatic than the results of the birthdates of the NHL players and firmly established the influence of RAEs. Clearly, there was a startling over-representation of players born at the start of the “hockey year” and an under-representation of players with birthdates at the end of the “hockey year.”
Our consequent first article, “Hockey success and birthdate: The relative age effect” (Barnsley et al., 1985), demonstrated the powerful RAE that produced about 40% of the players in the oldest quartile, 30% in the 2nd quartile, 20% in the 3rd quartile, and 10% in the youngest quartile. Parenthetically, we believe this to be the first use of the term “Relative Age Effects.” Langer, Kalk, and Searls (1984) used the concept of “relative age” as a variable in their study but did not use the term “Relative
Table 2.1 Month of birth: National Hockey League players, 1982–1983 season
Source: Barnsley et al. (1985).
Figure 2.1 Distribution of birth months of Western Hockey League and Ontario Hockey League hockey players.
Source: Barnsley et al. (1985). The number of male live births, per month, were taken from the1968 Canadian Statistical Review for the period 1 July 1966 to 30 June 1967 –the modal years for the players included in the study.
Age Effects.” We should note here that Simon Grondin of Laval University also discovered the birth month bias in hockey in his master’s thesis of 1982, but we were not aware of his findings until we learned of his paper that had been published in 1984 (Grondin, Deshaies, & Nault, 1984).
Development of RAEs in Minor Hockey
Having identified strong RAEs in these three hockey leagues, it was clear that we should examine the progress of minor hockey players in relation to their relative age. Gus was able to obtain the complete player registration data for the Edmonton Minor Hockey Association, and the analyses of these data became the basis for our second article, “Birthdate and success in minor hockey: The key to the NHL” (Barnsley & Thompson, 1988).
The data from the Edmonton Minor Hockey Association were separated into birth quartiles and combined across all age groups. Figure 2.2
Figure 2.2 The relationship between birthdates and participation rates in minor hockey irrespective of age.
Source: Barnsley and Thompson (1988). The number of live births, per birth-quarter, was based on a theoretical expected frequency that assumed a random and unbiased distribution of male births throughout each year, which was then applied to the study years 1963 through 1976. This did not differ statistically from the actual quarterly distribution of male live births in Canada in 1966–1967.
clearly demonstrates a significant RAE, although it was noted in the article that RAEs were not observed in the ten-year-old and younger leagues. It was also interesting to note that the participation rates changed with age, as relatively younger players tended to drop out of hockey and that older, elite players often left minor hockey to play with more competitive organizations.
Two important implications of this study were immediately apparent. First, it demonstrated the existence of RAEs among minor hockey league players, thus firmly placing the onset of RAEs in childhood. Second, it showed that dropping out from competitive youth hockey, and likely other competitive endeavours, is associated with RAEs as the participation of relatively younger players decreased with age.
A further analysis of the Edmonton Minor Hockey Association data looked at RAEs in the context of comparing the different levels (tiers)
Figure 2.3 T he relationship between birthdates and competitive “tier” among minor hockey players.
Source: Barnsley and Thompson (1988).
of competition within each age group. The results of these analyses can be found in Figure 2.3. These results established the basic finding that RAEs are clearly evident in the more competitive tiers of minor hockey where the effects of selection and differentiated hockey experience are most evident. The results also demonstrated that RAEs became more strongly apparent with increasing age and hockey exposure for this cohort of minor hockey players – a trend that does not necessarily apply at the Major Junior and top professional levels of organization. It is our opinion that this is because RAEs are most active during the developmental years of childhood, but with its seemingly durable outcomes maintained due to its own impetus. Any post- childhood alterations in birthdate distributions would theoretically arise because of some other factor or factors. This explanation is supported by recent research that has demonstrated an RAE “reversal” whereby it is the late-born (October–December) NHL players that tend to excel in scoring and to receive higher salaries (Fumarco, Gibbs, Jarvis, & Rossi, 2017).
18 Paula E. Barnsley et al.
From this second article, we were able to confidently hypothesize that R AEs would be found when the following conditions were met: (1) participants are age-grouped for competition, (2) team selection is based on abilities related to maturation, (3) differentiated advantages and disadvantages are accorded to teams based on level of competition, and (4) continuing participation in the sport is related to RAE advantages and disadvantages.
RAEs in Soccer/Football
In 1989, Ken Dryden and Roy MacGregor published Home Game: Hockey and Life in Canada , which is a wonderful book about hockey. One evening, Roger was reading Home Game and was disappointed to see that the discovery of RAEs was incorrectly attributed to two other authors. Roger wrote to Dryden and MacGregor and provided them with the research background to the identification of RAEs. In November of 1990, MacGregor wrote Roger a thoughtful note of apology and indicated that he would set the record straight in his forthcoming, nationally syndicated article in the Ottawa Citizen (MacGregor, 1990).
A few days later, Roger received a telephone call from Philipe Legault f rom the Canadian Soccer Association. Philipe said that he had just read MacGregor’s article in the Ottawa Citizen and, as he thought about it, he was confident that RAEs existed both in national and international soccer. Roger suggested that if he could provide the data, Gus and Roger would analyze the results and Philipe could join them in publishing the research. The resulting article was “Family planning football style. The relative age effect in football” (Barnsley et al., 1992). In this article, three groups of male athletes were analyzed and compared, including FIFA World Cup players and FIFA U20 and U17 World Cup participants. The results overwhelmingly confirmed RAEs in all three of the World Cup groups, although RAEs were not as dominant among the regular World Cup players.
However, the most startling and validating results are found in F igure 2.4 where three different groups of athletes are compared: the Under 17 World Cup players; the Under 20 World Cup players, and; the Junior A hockey players described by Barnsley et al. (1985). These three groups of athletes appear remarkably similar, if not identical, regardless of the fact that they represent: (1) two different sports, hockey and football/soccer, (2) players from many different countries, and (3) different “sport years” (i.e. hockey groups players from January 1 to December 31, whereas, at that time, international football/soccer grouped players from August 1 to July 31). For us, this single graph has always captured the strength, generality, and reliability of RAEs.
Figure 2.4 C omparison of football and hockey player distribution across eligibility-yearbirth-quarters.
Sources: Barnsley et al. (1985, 1992).
RAEs Are Smaller in Baseball
Several years passed, and we decided to study RAEs in baseball because this youth sport is structurally different in organization and competition from hockey and soccer. Little League Baseball generally groups all players aged 9–12 in one league and then, at the end of the season, all-star teams are selected for more competitive play. This is unlike soccer and hockey where select players are usually chosen at the beginning of the sport year and play together as a team for the whole season.
Our publication “Born to play ball: The relative age effect and Major L eague Baseball” (Thompson et al., 1991) did not show the strong RAEs found in hockey and soccer. Relative age effects in baseball are weak among Major League Baseball (MLB) players and inconsistent among Little League players. In fact, the Little League data did not exhibit RAEs for overall league players combined. However, RAEs did appear among the elite players chosen for end-of-season competitive activities (Thompson et al., 1992) and, importantly, appeared to be even stronger at the very highest level of play – the Little League World Series (LLWS; Dixon, Chittle, & Horton, 2015).
20 Paula E. Barnsley et al.
In terms of Little League play that is outside of the LLWS, the comparatively weak RAEs appear to be a function of the larger age grouping of the players and its unique competitive structure. That is, at the time of publishing this article (1992), elite players were selected from all teams for end of the year competition. Furthermore, Little League players are at a relative age disadvantage when they begin the sport (at about age nine), but will progress to an advantage in later years as they age within the cohort (to age 12; Thompson et al., 1992). These findings suggest that the modest RAEs in MLB may be a natural consequence of a lowered RAE influence during the formative playing years within Little League. However, all this does not explain the fact that RAEs among LLWS players are stronger than that found for either Little League or Major League players in general.
RAEs and Mental Health
With RAEs well established in our research for sports, we wondered if it might be associated with ancillary behaviours. Consequently, we extended our interest in RAEs to mental health and suicide. In the first of two studies, we found a significant RAE for self-esteem among students in Grades 1 through 9 (Thompson, Barnsley, & Dyck, 1999). Notably, although children from broken families showed lower average selfesteem scores at all school-entry ages, their RAE trajectory across ages was parallel to that of children from intact families. This is important because it provides no support for the proposition that life in an intact family would neutralize RAEs but is in line with the suggestion that it often serves as an impediment to personal development (Musch & Grondin, 2001). In our second mental health-related study, we found that youth suicide (for those aged 19 years and under) was more frequent among those born in the last six months of the school eligibility year (Thompson, Barnsley, & Battle, 2004), indicating that RAEs have implications well beyond performance in sports and education.
It is important to note that both of these studies showed RAEs that were statistically significant, but of comparatively low magnitude. We speculate that this might be because eligibility years were pegged to societally prescribed school entry dates in both studies. There are no formal eligibility years for mental health conditions, thus the school entry dates served as proxies. It is inevitable that the use of proxy-derived cut-offs will lose some precision in translation. As a consequence, we are turning our explorations towards the investigation of models that are more suitable for mental health conditions.
Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that discoveries of new and important phenomena, such as RAEs, are not always the result of rigorous
scientific examination and crabwise shuttling towards an important conclusion; rather, they are often the consequence of keen observations of events whose serendipitous appearance would appear innocuous to most persons, but that have, nonetheless, played a role in many important scientific discoveries (Beveridge, 1980).
Further, it appears that serendipity is generally primed by a condition of “readiness” when it comes to the interpretation of surprising observations. This was noted by Charles Goodyear who rejected “accident” as an explanation for his discovery of stove-top vulcanization (see Peirce, 1866). In this spirit, we modestly suggest that our earlier experiences had prepared us to readily incorporate the meaning and implications of Paula’s astute observations.
In the past years, Gus and Roger have continued to leisurely explore R AEs in what we have called our “hobby research” and to respond to many calls from parents requesting advice. Gus found himself reversing his pre-RAE position by advising parents with children born just inside the eligibility age cut-off to consider holding their children back for a year.
As we look back and reminisce over the past 35 years of RAE research, we are delighted to see that there is substantial new and continuing research interest in RAEs. We enthusiastically look forward to new directions and progress in both understanding and developing knowledge that will show us how this powerful, generally unwanted effect can be mitigated or, in the right situation, harnessed.
References
Barnsley, R. H., & Thompson, A. H. (1988). Birthdate and success in minor hockey: The key to the NHL. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 20, 167–176.
Barnsley, R. H., Thompson, A. H., & Barnsley, P. E. (1985). Hockey success a nd birthdate: The relative age effect. Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation , 51, 23–28.
Barnsley, R. H., Thompson, A. H., & Legault, P. (1992). Family planning: Football style. The relative age effect in football. International Review of the Sociology of Sport, 27, 78–88.
Beveridge, W. I. B. (1980). Seeds of discovery: The logic, illogic, serendipity, a nd sheer chance of scientific discovery. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Dixon, J. C., Chittle, L., & Horton, S. (2015). An age-old problem in L ittle League Baseball: Teaching notes. Case Studies in Sport Management, 4, 1–14.
Dryden, K., & MacGregor, R. (1989). Home game: Hockey and life in Canada. Toronto, ON: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Fumarco, L., Gibbs, B. G., Jarvis, J. A., & Rossi, G. (2017). The relative age effect reversal among the National Hockey League elite. PLoS One, 12(8), e0182827.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
22 Paula E. Barnsley et al.
Grondin, S. (1982). Influence du trimestre de naissance sur l’accès à la participation au hockey et au volleyball. Thèse de mâıtrise (non publiée). Université de Sherbrooke, Canada.
Grondin, S., Deshaies, P., & Nault, L. P. (1984). Trimestres de naissance et participation au hockey et au volleyball. La Revue Québéecoise de l’Activité Physique, 2 , 97–103.
Halpin, C. (Ed.). (1983). The Hockey News 1983 yearbook. Toronto, ON: The Ho ckey News.
Jinks, P. C. (1964). An investigation into the effect of date of birth on subsequent school performance. Educational Research, 6 , 220–225.
Langer, P., Kalk, J. M., & Searls, D. T. (1984). Age of admission and trends i n achievement: A comparison of Blacks and Caucasians. American Educational Research Journal, 21, 61–78.
MacGregor, R. (1990, November 9). SMU Dean discovers uncanny hockey link. T he Ottawa Citizen, p. 56.
Musch, J., & Grondin, S. (2001). Unequal competition as an impediment to p ersonal development: A review of the relative age effect in sport. Developmental Review, 21, 147–167.
Peirce, B. K. (1866). Trials of an inventor: Life and discoveries of Charles G oodyear. New York, NY: Phillips and Hunt. Restored & reprinted by Forgotten Books, 2018.
Sutton, P. (1967). Correlation between streaming and season of birth in seconda ry schools. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 37, 300–304.
Thompson, A. H., Barnsley, R. H., & Battle, J. (2004). The relative age effect a nd the development of self-esteem. Educational Research, 46 , 313–320.
Thompson, A. H., Barnsley, R. H., & Dyck, R. J. (1999). A new factor in youth suicide: The relative age effect. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 44, 82–85.
Thompson, A. H., Barnsley, R. H., & Stebelsky, G. (1991). “Born to play ball”: T he relative age effect and Major League Baseball. Sociology of Sport Journal, 8, 146–151.
Thompson, A. H., Barnsley, R. H., & Stebelsky, G. (1992). Baseball performance and the relative age effect: Does Little League neutralize birth date selection bias? Nine, 1(1), 19–30.
3 Antecedents and Explanations of Relative Age Effects
David J. Hancock
During the past three decades, researchers have posited several mechanisms that influence Relative Age Effects (RAEs). Among these are mechanisms that relate to sport structures, physical development, and social agents. The aim of this chapter is to describe these mechanisms and explain how they might facilitate RAEs.
Sport Structures Influence RAEs
Sport governing bodies are tasked with creating sport structures that maximize safe and fair play for athletes. For many governing bodies, this entails creating age bands and competitive tiers in which athletes will compete. Such structure is required in organized sport, yet it can influence RAEs.
Annual Age Bands
With few exceptions (e.g. wrestling), sport governing bodies institute age bands to categorize youth athletes. Depending on the number of registrants in an organization, athletes might be grouped into one- (e.g. all children born in 2012 compete together) or two-year age bands (e.g. all children born in 2011 and 2012 compete together). When determining age bands, governing bodies specify on which dates (i.e. cut-off dates) athletes can be born while remaining eligible to participate in that age band. Using an annual band as an example, a governing body might state that the oldest children can be born 1 January, while the youngest can be born 31 December. Though annual age bands are thought to reduce age differences, sizable discrepancies exist, especially at younger ages. Consider two children born 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2013. On 1 January 2020, the older child is seven years and zero days old, while the younger child is six years and one day old. This represents an age gap of 364 days. To put this into perspective, the younger child has only been alive 85% of the time that the older child has been. By virtue of being alive longer, relatively older children have more opportunities for sport exposure (e.g. playing with friends, individual practice, and
organized sport), which could enhance skill and increase their chances to be selected to elite teams.
Annual age bands are an inherent structure in sport and reducing R AEs is not as simple as changing the selection year or cut-off dates. Examining RAEs among Belgian youth soccer players, Helsen, Starkes, and van Winckel (2000) demonstrated the futility of such changes. The authors inspected birth rate distributions for the 1996–1997 and 1997–1998 seasons. During the 1996–1997 season, the Belgian Soccer Federation implemented an 1 August to 31 July selection year, which shifted to 1 January to 31 December in 1997–1998. In both seasons, relatively older players were more likely to be identified as talented, regardless of whether they were born in August (i.e. 1996–1997 season) or January (i.e. 1997–1998 season).
Given these results, it appears that when annual age bands are implemented in youth sport, any arbitrary cut-off date will result in large age discrepancies, yielding RAEs. One potential method for addressing annual age bands, then, is to implement cut-off dates that rotate over a four-year period (Hurley, Lior, & Tracze, 2001). As an example, the oldest athletes in a basketball league during the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 seasons would be born 1 January, 1 July, 1 April and 1 October, respectively. This system does not eliminate annual age bands but instead provides all children the opportunity to be oldest in a cohort, while also providing the challenge of being youngest. Instituting rotating cut-off dates, however, has its drawbacks. For instance, ensuring athletes are registered in the correct divisions could pose logistical issues for governing bodies. Further, if opponents from multiple associations or clubs use different cut-off dates to select their teams, there could be competitive disadvantages for the team with cut-off dates that are later in the year. Finally, a prime reason for participating in youth sport is for socialization (Ewing & Seefeldt, 1989; Weinberg et al., 2000); not remaining with the same cohort of friends from year to year could reduce socialization opportunities, rendering sport less appealing for young athletes. Considering these challenges, it might be that annual age bands (and the pitfalls associated with them) remain an inherent structure of sport in the future.
Depth of Competition
The societal value and popularity of certain sports differs between count ries. Examples of this include soccer in Brazil, handball in Germany, rugby in New Zealand, ice hockey in Canada, speed skating in the Netherlands, and cricket in India – all of which are considered especially important sports in their respective countries. In each of these countries, the popularity of these sports leads to more youth sport participants (i.e. depth of competition; Musch & Grondin, 2001). Governing bodies
