Seeing the forest but not the trees: Heterogeneity in community size effects in Canadian ice hockey players

ABSTRACT

The community size effect (or birthplace effect) suggests that high-performance athletes are less likely to emerge from regions with population sizes that are very small or very large. However, previous research on elite Canadian ice hockey players has not considered the influence of intra-national regional variation of population distributions with respect to community size effects. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to test the heterogeneity of the community size effect between Canadian National Hockey League draftees (2000–2014: n = 1505), from 7 provincial regions within Canada (i.e., British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces). The proportion of athletes in the 9 census population categories were compared to the national and regional general population distributions in the census categories. Results suggest variability of community size effects between the 7 provincial regions within Canada, with only the province of Ontario demonstrating a community size effect congruent with effects reported in previous research. Using regional general population distributions as the comparator to athlete populations changed the direction, meaningfulness and magnitude of community size effects. In conclusion, elite ice hockey player community size effects may not be generalisable to all regions within Canada.

KEYWORDS:

• Birthplace effect
• athlete development
• expertise
• sport
• methodology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ These effects have been called different names. We have chosen “community size effects” since this term is a more accurate reflection of what is actually measured in this research. See Baker et al. (2014) for a more expansive discussion of this issue.

² These proportions and frequencies were obtained from data in the 1996 Canadian census, which is arguably the most relevant one for current athletes.

³ As of 1996 Nunavut had not become a distinct territory from the Northwest Territories. The separation of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut become formal in 1999.