International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

search-icon

The Relative Age Effect on Physical Fitness among 12 Years Old Children in Malaysia

Open access

Mohamad Azri Ismail bin Ahmad, Siti Musliha binti Mat Rasid, Jeffrey Low Fook Lee, Mohd Izwan bin Shahril, Gunathevan Elumalai, Musa Rabiu Muazu, Norlaila Azura binti Kosni

Pages 2275-2284 Received: 27 Sep, 2023 Revised: 24 Oct, 2023 Published Online: 21 Nov, 2023

http://dx.doi.org/10.46886/IJARBSS/v13-i11/7625
The purpose of this study was to identify differences in fitness levels between children who are the same age but were born in different birth quartiles. 98 year six students (12 years old) from all around the state of Perak, boys and girls who do not have any unusual health conditions were used for the samples. Based on their quarter of birth, all children were divided into quarters: quarter 1 (q1: born between January and March), quarter 2 (q2: born between April and June), quarter 3 (q3: born between July and September), and quarter 4 (q4: born between October and December). Fitness tests will include body composition measurements (body weight, standing, and sitting heights, and arm span), standing broad jump test, sit and reach test, 30-meter sprint test, handgrip, step test, curl up test, stork stand test, and T-Test. The distribution of the participants was 98 children aged 12 years old (n =31 (31.6%), n = 27 (27.6%), n = 21 (21.4%) and n = 19 (19.4%)), from quarter 1, quarter 2, quarter 3 and quarter 4, respectively. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare four birth quartiles on twelve physical fitness tests. The multivariate test of the differences among the four groups was significant, f(12,85)=.043, Roy’s Lambda = 0.272. Children born in the first quarter of the year were found to be more talented than those born in the last quarter.
Augste, C., Lames, M. (2011). The relative age effect and success in German elite U-17 soccer teams. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29 (9), 983–987
Aune, T. K., Pedersen, A. V., Ingvaldsen, R. P., & Dalen, T. (2017). Relative Age Effect and Gender Differences in Physical Education Attainment in Norwegian Schoolchildren. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 61(3), 369–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2016.1148073
Barron, D., Ball, G., Robins, M., & Sunderland, C. (2020). Identifying playing talent in professional football using artificial neural networks. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1-10.
Bell, J. F., & Daniels, S. (1990). Are Summer-born children disadvantaged? The birthdate effect in education. Oxford Review of Education, 16(1), 67– 80. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305498900160106
Bidaurrazaga-Letona, I., Lekue, J. A., Amado, M., & Gil, S. M. (2019). Progression in youth soccer: Selection and identification in youth soccer players aged 13–15 years. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 33(9), 2548-2558.
Doyle, J. R., Bottomley, P. A., & Angell, R. (2017). Tails of the Travelling Gaussian model and the relative age effect: Tales of age discrimination and wasted talent. PloS one, 12(4).
Ek, S., Wollmer, P., Karlsson, M. K., Peterson, T., Thorsson, O., Olsson, M. C., Malmborg, J. S., & Dencker, M. (2020). Relative Age Effect of Sport Academy Adolescents, a Physiological Evaluation. Sports, 8(1), 5.
Fumarco, L., & Rossi, G. (2018). The relative age effect on labour market outcomes–evidence from Italian football. European Sport Management Quarterly, 18(4), 501–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2018.1424225
Güllich, A., & Cobley, S. (2017). On the efficacy of talent identification and talent development programmes. In Routledge handbook of talent identification and development in sport (pp. 80-98). Routledge.
Guirguis, M. (2019). Application of a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), to Identify the Factors That Affect the Performance and the Fees of the Different Categories of Hedge Funds. Available at SSRN 3354629.
Helsen, W. F., Van Winckel, J., Williams, A. M. (2005). The relative age effect in youth soccer across Europe. Journal of Sports Sciences, 23 (6), 629–636
Louzada, F., Maiorano, A. C., & Ara, A. (2016). iSports: A web-oriented expert system for talent identification in soccer. Expert Systems with Applications, 44, 400-412.
Low, J. F. L. (2018). Are Malaysian Young Athletes Really Talented? An Examination of the Relative Age Effects among the Malaysian Schools Sports Council (MSSM) Athletes. 3rd FIEP ASIA CONFERENCE Physical Education and Sports, Tunku Abdul Rahman University College, Kuala Lumpur, 1 – 3 June 2018, ISBN 978-967-0115-03-0.
Mat-Rasid, S. M., Abdullah, M. R., Juahir, H., Musa, R. M., Maliki, A. B. H. M., Adnan, A., ... & Alias, N. (2017). Relative age effect in physical attributes and motor fitness at different birth-month quartile. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, 9(2S), 521-538.
Shah, M. S., Lee, J. L. F., Madzlan, N. H., Sabadri, M. S. N. S., & Saleh, M. (2020). The Relative Age Effect in Malaysia Youth Athletes. Lecture Notes in Bioengineering, 2(Campo 2010), 71–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3270-2_8
Patel, R., Nevill, A., Cloak, R., Smith, T., & Wyon, M. (2019). Relative age, maturation, anthropometry and physical performance characteristics of players within an Elite Youth Football Academy. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, 14(6), 714–725. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747954119879348
Pion, J., Hohmann, A., Liu, T., Lenoir, M., & Segers, V. (2017). Predictive models reduce talent development costs in female gymnastics. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(8), 806–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1192669
Phahlamohlaka, M. C., & Coetzee, M. (2018, March). CaseRank: Ranking case law using precedent and principal component analysis. In 2018 Conference on Information Communications Technology and Society (ICTAS) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Praxedes, A., Moreno, A., Garcia-Gonzalez, L., Pizarro, D., Del Villar, F. (2017). The relative age effect on soccer players in formative stages with different sport expertise levels. Journal of Human Kinetics, 60 (1), 167–173.
Roberts, S. J., Boddy, L. M., Fairclough, S. J., & Stratton, G. (2012). The influence of relative age effects on the cardiorespiratory fitness levels of children age 9 to 10 and 11 to 12 years of age. Pediatric Exercise Science, 24(1), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.1123/pes.24.1.72
Sasano, N., Katsumata, Y., & Nakata, H. (2020). Relative Age Effects in Male Japanese Professional Athletes: a 25-Year Historical Analysis. Sports Medicine - Open, 6(1), 0–6. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-020-00277-4
Till, K., Jones, B. L., Cobley, S., Morley, D., O'Hara, J., Chapman, C., & Beggs, C. B. (2016). Identifying talent in youth sport: a novel methodology using higher-dimensional analysis. PLoS One, 11(5).
Tripathi, M., & Singal, S. K. (2019). Use of Principal Component Analysis for parameter selection for development of a novel Water Quality Index: A case study of river Ganga India. Ecological Indicators, 96, 430-436.
Wattie, N., Schorer, J., & Baker, J. (2015). The relative age effect in sport: A developmental systems model. Sports Medicine, 45(1), 83-94.