Is There an Influence of Relative Age on Participation in Non-Physical Sports Activities? The Example of Shooting Sports.

Nicolas Delorme (1) , Michel Raspaud (1)

1 SENS - Sport et Environnement Social

The aim of this study was to test the presence of the Relative Age Effect (RAE) on the overall male (n = 119,715) and female (n = 12,823) population of the shooting sports federation, and to see if it has an impact on discontinuance. For the boys as for the girls, the results show a uniform distribution of discontinuance. Concerning the girls, a RAE was not found, showing that in female shooting sports this effect is not operating. Looking at the males, a significant statistical RAE was not detected in “18-20 years old” and “13-14 years old” categories. However, this effect was found in “adults”, “11-12 years old” and “under 11 years old” categories. A significant “inverse” RAE was found for the “15-17 years old”. If the rejection of the null hypothesis in some male age groups of a non-physical sports activity is of interest, further qualitative research is needed in order to clearly understand which factors contribute to this asymmetric distribution of birth dates in French male shooting sports.

Mots clés: Relative Age Effect; Discrimination; Dropout; Shooting sports.; Shooting sports

Domaines: Sociologie

Nicolas Delorme, Michel Raspaud. Is There an Influence of Relative Age on Participation in Non-Physical Sports Activities? The Example of Shooting Sports.. Journal of Sports Sciences, 2009, 27 (10), pp.1035-1042. ⟨10.1080/02640410902926438⟩. ⟨hal-00371373⟩