Abstract
Although there is an extensive literature about talent development, the lack of data pertaining to females is problematic. Indeed, the gender data gap can be seen in practically all domains including sport and exercise medicine. Evidence-based practice is the systematic reviewing of the best evidence in order to make informed choices about practice. Unfortunately, it may be that the data collected in sport is typically about male experiences, and not female; a rather unfortunate omission given that approximately half of the population is made up of women. When female athletes are underrepresented in research there are issues when making inferences about data collected in male dominated research domains to inform practice and policy for female athletes. In parallel, female sport participation is continually increasing worldwide. Recognizing the importance of evidence-based practice in driving policy and practice, and reflecting the gender data gap that is a consistent feature of (almost) all other domains, we were interested in examining whether a gender data gap exists in talent development research. The results suggest that a gender data gap exists in talent development research across all topics. Youth athlete development pathways may be failing to recognize the development requirements of females, particularly where female sports may be borrowing systems that are perceived to work for their male counterparts. In order to ensure robust evidence based practice in female youth sport there is a need to increase the visibility of female athletes in talent development literature.
Highlights
The literature base, and data, about talent development in sport is extensive and includes a range of empirical articles (Coutinho et al, 2015; Forsman et al, 2016), theory-driven papers (Phillips et al, 2010; Davids et al, 2013), and models of talent development (Gagné, 2004; Bailey and Morley, 2006) that are purported to enable researchers, practitioners, and policy makers generate a clear understanding of what is known in order to guide their practice and inform policy decisions
Following the PRISMA flow diagram guidelines developed by Moher et al (2009), an outline of the detailed overview of the Reflecting the aims of this study, we were interested in examining the participant populations included in the talent development research from 1999 to 2019
Of the 276 research papers included in the data synthesis, only 9.42% included a female only population in comparison to 60.14% in a male only population, and 30.43% with both males and females included in the participant group. This finding clearly indicates that a gender data gap exists in the talent development research from 1999 to 2019
Summary
The literature base, and data, about talent development in sport is extensive and includes a range of empirical articles (Coutinho et al, 2015; Forsman et al, 2016), theory-driven papers (Phillips et al, 2010; Davids et al, 2013), and models of talent development (Gagné, 2004; Bailey and Morley, 2006) that are purported to enable researchers, practitioners, and policy makers generate a clear understanding of what is known in order to guide their practice and inform policy decisions. Evidencebased practice is the systematic reviewing of the best evidence in order to make informed choices about practice. It may be (as elsewhere in a data-driven world) that the data collected in sport is typically about male experiences, and not female; a rather unfortunate omission given that approximately half of the population is made up of women (The World Bank, 2017)!. The gender data gap (Perez, 2019) is important to consider against the growth of womens’ and girls’ sport in general and the subsequent implementation of female specific talent development pathways (e.g., The Football Association Girls’ England Talent Pathway; The FA, 2017). The dangers of not having, and using, robust data on females is farreaching
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