Scientific production on the relative age effect in sport: bibliometric analysis of the last 9 years (2015-2023)

Abstract

Objective. To conduct a bibliometric analysis of scientific production regarding the relative age effect in sport, using data from the PubMed and Scopus databases spanning from January 1, 2015, to April 30, 2023. Methodology. It was based on a descriptive bibliometric analysis of the scientific production having as indicators the following categories: 1) database; 2) year of publication; 3) journal name; 4) journal country; 5) H-index; 6) SCI index (2021); 7) Quartile (Q1; Q2; Q3; Q4); 8); Number of articles per Journal; 9) Scopus citations; 10) Countries evaluated; 11) Colective sports; 12) Individual sports; 13) number of times the sample of a country was evaluated according to journals; 14) Area of knowledge; 15) Gender; 16) Number of authors; 17) Name authors; 18) Instruments used to determine the relative age effect of athletes; 19) Research approach; 20) Research design; 21) Statistical Software packcage; 22) Statistical test; 23) Languaje; 24) Sample Size. The following MeSH terms were used to search for the documents: "Sport", "relative age", "sports performance", and the search equations ("sport competition" AND "relative age effect”), ("sports talent" AND "relative age effect”), ("physical differences" AND "relative age effect”) to search for documents in the Scopus and PubMed databases, obtaining a total of 597 documents. In the end, after applying the criteria, 185 documents were accepted. Results. The number of publications per year has exhibited fluctuating behavior, with 2018 being the year with the highest production (16.09%) and 2016 the lowest (6.32%). In front of the journal, we found those with the most publications, were PloS One with 24 papers (12.97%), Sports with 15 (8.10%), and Journal of Human Kinetics with 13 (7.02%). PloS One (591) and the Journal of Sports Sciences (478) received the highest number of citations. Regarding sports, the ones with the highest number of publications are Soccer with 61 (32.90%), various sports with 24 (12.90%), and basketball with 16 documents (8.64%). Taking into account the countries evaluated, the World Cup (13.008%) and Spain (12.195%) have the highest number of documents. As for the total number of documents by area of knowledge, sports talent (25.40%), sports competition (22.70%), and sports training (15.13%) are the highest. Finally, about gender, it is found that the highest production is about men (74.26%), women-men (20.46%), and women (7.01%). Conclusions. It is concluded that the bibliometric study contributes substantially to the scientific community from the findings found in the study and the change of focus with which relative age has recently been studied. Likewise, it can guide future studies aimed at characterizing and determining the effect of relative age in sports. Key Words: relative age, sport, sports science, sports competition, sports talent