The relative age effect in school and federative sport in basketball

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the distribution of birth dates among Portuguese basketball players participating in national competitions (academic and federal). The study sample consisted of 1497 federated athletes (744 female and 753 male), and by 411 athletes (214 female and 382 male.) who participated in the finals of Scholar Sports. We analyzed the distribution of birth dates per quartile in federated and scholar sports by gender. In the federated analysis this distribution depended also on the classification and ranking of the teams. All data were analyzed with SPSS for Windows, version 14.0. The statistical significance level was maintained at p ≤ .05. The results suggest that there is a prevalence of athletes born in the first months of the year in both scholar and federated sports. However, only in de the sub-14 federated male group were found significant values (p < .05).