Department of Biomedical Kinesiology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
J Sports Sci. 2012;30(15):1665-71. doi: 10.1080/02640414.2012.721929. Epub 2012 Sep 24.
The relative age effect (RAE) refers to an asymmetry in the birth-date distribution favouring players born early in the selection year and discriminating against participants born later in the year. While the RAE effect was initially reported in sport more than two decades ago, there have been few attempts to examine whether player selection strategies have changed over time in light of our improved understanding of the phenomenon. We compared the birth-date distributions of professional soccer players in ten European countries over a 10-year period involving the 2000-2001 and 2010-2011 competitive seasons, respectively. Chi-square goodness-of-fit tests were used to compare differences between the observed and expected birth-date distributions across selection years. Generally, results indicated no change in the RAE over the past 10 years in professional soccer, emphasizing the robust nature of this phenomenon. We propose a change in the structure of youth involvement in soccer to reduce the impact of the RAE on talent identification and selection.
相对年龄效应（RAE）是指在选择年份中，出生日期较早的运动员具有优势，而出生日期较晚的运动员则处于劣势的一种出生日期分布不对称现象。尽管相对年龄效应在二十多年前就首次在体育运动中被报道，但很少有研究试图根据我们对这一现象的深入了解，来检验运动员选拔策略是否随着时间的推移而发生了变化。我们比较了十个欧洲国家在 2000-2001 年和 2010-2011 年两个竞争赛季的职业足球运动员的出生日期分布。我们使用卡方拟合优度检验来比较各选拔年份的实际出生日期分布与预期出生日期分布之间的差异。结果普遍表明，过去 10 年职业足球中的相对年龄效应没有变化，这突出了这一现象的稳健性。我们提出改变青少年参与足球的结构，以减少相对年龄效应对人才识别和选拔的影响。
