Abstract
While research on the effects of 'birth month' is usually referred to as relative age effects, the study of the effects of 'birth year' is described as the constituent year effect (CYE). In the present study we examined the impact of the CYE on participation in the Junior World Championship in alpine skiing. Based on previous research, we expected to find increasing numbers of participants the older the age-group, and that the CYE would be stronger in the speed events compared to the technical ones. The sample in the present study consisted of 1188 male skiers and 859 female skiers within the age range of 17 to 21 years at the time of competition. The results show that the number of male participants increased with increasing age, which can be described as a CYE. For female skiers, a CYE was found, but it dissipated two years earlier than for male skiers. The CYE varied with event and was more pronounced the higher the speed of the event. The findings thus suggest that a constituent year effect exists among skiers participating in the FIS Junior World Ski Championship in the alpine skiing championships, and that the effect varies with gender and event, rather unrelated to age. Thus, it seems that the effect may not be a relative age effect, but instead a relative development effect.
Highlights
A vast amount of literature has been produced on the relative age effect (RAE) in sports or terms related to this topic [shown in a number of studies, e.g. 1]
The male and female alpine skiers participating in the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) Junior World Ski Championship in alpine skiing in Sochi 2016, Åre 2017, and Davos 2018 were selected for the present study
In order to examine the constituent year effects, the distribution of the participants across age, sex and events was examined by Chi-square tests (χ2) against an even distribution, with Cramer’s V (φ) as a measure of effect size interpreted according to Cohen [36] as small
Summary
A vast amount of literature has been produced on the relative age effect (RAE) in sports or terms related to this topic [shown in a number of studies, e.g. 1]. The term RAE denotes the “overall difference in age between individuals within each age group” [2]. Grouping children chronologically by age induces a potentially large difference in age, which has shown to have a great impact on selection biases in sports competitions as well as affecting school results [3, 4]. The RAE has been detected, and most often reported, in team sports like soccer [2, 7], ice hockey [8], and handball [9, 10].
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