Delayed or on-time? Examining the moderating effect of academic timing on the relative age effect among Canadian interuniversity athletes

ABSTRACT

Relative age effects (RAE) are developmental advantages experienced by those born in the initial months after a predetermined cut-off date over their younger counterparts. Student-athletes are considered to be “on-time” when their current year of athletic eligibility coincides with their expected year of athletic eligibility, based on their year of birth. Conversely, student-athletes are considered “delayed” when their current athletic eligibility year corresponds with a younger cohort. This study examined the impact of the RAE and academic timing on participation within nine of the 12 Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship sports. A logistic regression was conducted to predict academic timing based on participants’ quartile of birth and sex. The results indicated that males are significantly more likely to be delayed than females, and those student-athletes born in the later months of the year are more frequently delayed compared to their relatively older peers.

KEYWORDS:

• Relative age effect
• academic timing
• Canadian interuniversity sport
• interuniversity sport
• sport
• on-time
• delayed
• policy development

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for funding this project and Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) for providing the eligibility certificates.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laura Chittle : Laura Chittle is a Phd student in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. She is currently funded through a Social Sciences and Humanities Council Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral Award.

Sean Horton : Sean Horton is an Associate Professor in the Kinesiology Department at the University of Windsor. His research interests lie primarily in the area of skill acquisition and expert performance, both in young athletes and as individuals age. Sean completed his PhD in 2007 in Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University and has been a faculty member at Windsor since January, 2008.

Jess C. Dixon: Jess Dixon is an Associate Professor of Sport Management in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor. His research and scholarly interests are in the area of strategic management in sport, executive leadership and human resource management in sport, relative age effects in sport, sport finance and economics, and sport management pedagogy.

Notes

1 These four regional conferences include: Canada West Universities Athletic Association (CWUAA), Ontario University Athletics (OUA), Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ), and Atlantic University Sport (AUS).

2 Student-athletes who attended a Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEP) high school in Quebec began university one year later than projected. This was accounted for when classifying student-athletes as being on-time, delayed, or advanced by adjusting their athletic eligibilities to account for these initial age differences.

3 When data are collapsed and not analyzed on a sport-to-sport basis, some student-athletes may be included in the analysis more than once because they competed in more than one CIS sport during the 2013–2014 season. However, because only 3.16% of athletes competed in multiple sports (with no athletes competing in more than two sports), dependent observations and data clustering are not considered problematic.

Additional information

Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s Scholarship.