The Relative Age Effect and Academic Timing in College Baseball

Background/Purpose Previous research has suggested that older athletes within the same age grouping are often perceived to be more talented simply due to advanced maturity. This perception leads to biased selection and skewed participation rates favoring the oldest participants within the group. This resulting skewed distribution is termed Relative Age Effect (RAE). Further, academic institutions often group their participants according to their academic status, not strictly by age. This factor, termed Academic Timing, can result in the ages of competitors spanning more than a single calendar year. Therefore, our purpose was to investigate whether RAE influenced the selection of junior college baseball participants, and study whether Academic Timing influences the formation of RAE.

Method The age in months of 150 baseball players from the roster of a junior college located in the Midwestern United States was collected.

Analysis/Results Without consideration for Academic Timing, RAE was not found to cause significant selection differences [χ² (3, n = 150) = 3.97, p = 0.26]. However, when the effect of Academic Timing was considered, a significantly larger proportion of older athletes was selected [χ² (5, n = 150) = 6.83, p = 0.009].

Conclusions The results of this study indicate RAE could bear more influence among American student-athletes than was previously reported. These findings suggest that, when combined to Academic Timing, the RAE significantly influences the selection of collegiate athletes. Academic Timing should be considered whenever the RAE is investigated among academic institutions.