Relative age effect in junior tennis (male)

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The issues of the age effect (the theory of the age influence) have been shown in sport sciences since the 1980s. The theory of age effect works on the assumption that athletes born in the beginning of a calendar year are, particularly in children's and junior age, more successful than athletes born in the end of the year. This fact has been proved by a number of research studies, mainly in ice hockey, soccer, and tennis but also in other sports. OBJECTIVE: The submitted contribution is aimed at verifying of the age effect in junior tennis. The research objective was to find out the distribution of birth date frequencies in a population of tennis players' in individual months, quarters, and half-years in the observed period 2007-2011 and to check the significance of differences. METHODS: The research was conducted on male tennis players aged 13-14 (N = 239), participants of the World Junior Tennis Finals. From the methodological point of view, it was an intentional selection. The birth dates of individual tennis players were taken from official materials of the ITF, the research data were processed using Microsoft Excel. The personal data were processed with the approval of players and the hosting organization (ITF). RESULTS: Testing of the hypothesis on the significance of differences in the distribution of frequencies between individual quarters (Q1-Q4) has proved statistically relevant differences between Q1 and Q3, Q1 and Q4, Q2 and Q3, and Q2 and Q4; a statistically relevant difference has been also found in the distribution of frequencies between the first and second half of the year. On the basis of the results of the presented research, the age effect in the studied population of junior male tennis players can be regarded as significant. CONCLUSIONS:The results of the analysis of the research data confirm the conclusions of similar studies in other sports and prove that in the population of elite junior players, participants of WJTF 2007-2011, there is a pronounced dominance of players born in the first and second quarters, i.e. in the first half-year. The mentioned conclusions show the necessity of reflecting the age effect in sports practice as it can influence sports performance, especially at the junior level.

Relative age effect in Polish National Football teams

“…It is believed that the acceptance of this criterion ensures fair competition and gives equal opportunities for the competitors. As a result, according to many studies conducted on athletes [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], players born at the beginning of a given selection year are more often identified as talented. This overidentification of talent in the older subgroup translates into greater opportunities to participate in competitions and more opportunities to represent the overall age groups.…”

“…The phenomenon of asymmetry in the distribution of birth dates, promoting players born at the beginning of the selection period and discriminating participants born in the later stages of the same period, is referred to as the Relative Age Effect (RAE) [13] and has been subjected to scientific research for many years [2,3,6,8,9,10,[14][15][16][17]. Mikulic et al [6] suggests that RAE may have a significant impact on the value of players selected for a representation and may be a reason for the low efficiency of the selection process for professional clubs.…”

Relative age effect při Mistrovství Evropy ve fotbalu 2016

“…Rozdíly mezi jedinci narozenými ve stejném roce, ale jiném měsíci, se označují jako Relative age (česky relativní věk) a důsledky vlivu dřívějšího či pozdějšího narození se označují jako Relative age effect (Musch & Grondin, 2001), česky vliv relativního věku. Pojem Relative age effect (RAE) je nejčastěji používaným pojmem v odborných publikacích, ale můžeme se setkat i s názvem Birth date effect (Karcher et al, 2014), Birth quarter (Larouche et al, 2010), Age effect (Agricola et al, 2013). Pojem Age effect je nejvíce používán v publikacích orientovaných na kategorii dětí a při výzkumech z oblasti vzdělávání (Martin et al, 2015).…”

Relative age effect on success in tennis competition in the older age-school children

“…Tieto faktory môžu mať veľký vplyv na lepší výkon oproti jeho konkurentom, čo sa následne môže odraziť vo výsledkoch v športových súťažiach (Agricola, Zháněl, & Hubáček, 2013;Agricola, Zháněl, Hubáček, Zvonař, & Psalman, 2012;Del Campo, Vicedo, Villora, & Jordan, 2010;Musch & Grodin, 2001). …”