Abstract
Relative age effects (RAEs) arise from age grouping policies that unintentionally create advantages for athletes born just after the cut-off date, placing younger members of the same cohort at a disadvantage (Dixon et al., 2020). Addressing these inequities is crucial for promoting fair competition as well as maximizing the potential for all participants in sport. One method that has shown promising results in mitigating RAEs when performance evaluations rely on the perspectives of talent scouts is age-ordered shirt numbering. In this approach, players’ jersey numbers reflect their relative ages, with the oldest assigned the lowest number and the youngest assigned with the highest number. Mann and van Ginneken (2016) demonstrated that when talent scouts know the meaning behind the assigned numbers, it reduced relative age selection bias in youth soccer.
Our study replicated and expanded upon Mann and van Ginneken’s (2016) study within youth ice hockey. Twenty-seven hockey scouts were grouped into three treatment conditions (no age information, date-of-birth, & age-ordered shirt numbering), instructed to watch video footage of a 60-minute U13 AAA talent showcase game, and then rank-order players using an online Qualtrics survey. Using a rank-ballot method, the relative age bias of scouts in each condition was calculated by correlating their rankings with those expected based solely on relative age. Our preliminary results suggest that age-ordered shirt numbering might actually reinforce RAEs in the context of youth ice hockey. Potential explanations for our findings, along with the implications, limitations, and future directions of this research will be discussed.
