Relative Age Effect in Individual Sports. A Systematic Review

Abstract

Relative Age Effect (RAE) refers to the influence that month birth could have over the performance of people born in the same year. Most RAE studies indicate that individuals born in the first quartiles of a given year may present biological, physical, cognitive, psychological advantages over those who were born in the last months of the same year. Such variations could affect performance, leading to overestimation of observed results at the evaluation time. Although RAE had become a well-studied phenomenon, few is known about the prevailing studies methodological characteristics, as well as the breakthroughs over the theme, particularly, in individual sports. Thus, this systematic review investigated the state of art of RAE in individual sports. Results reveal RAE was found among athletes of individual sports; most studies described RAE in individual sports, nevertheless, few established relations between RAE and other variables (i.e. anthropometry, technical performance.) besides the quarter of birth. Findings indicate most RAE studies in individual sports focus their methodologies and results on describing athletes’ percentage born in each quartile of the year. Therefore, the theme requires a new approach, focused on the relation of RAE with sports talent identification and athlete development processes in individual sports.