Relative age is associated with sport dropout: evidence from youth categories of French basketball

The aim of the current research was to investigate the relative age effect as a factor of basketball dropout. In order to do so, we examined the distribution of birth dates of young male (n = 44,498) and female (n = 30,147) French basketball players who have dropped out this sport during or at the end of the 2005-2006 season. Chi-square analyses showed an underrepresentation of dropouts among male players born early in the competition year and an overrepresentation among those born late in the ‘9-10 years old', ‘11-12 years old' and ‘13-14 years old' categories and in the first year of the ‘15-17 years old' category. Concerning girls, this asymmetry was observed across the same age categories. For both boys and girls, there was no biased distribution in the ‘7-8 years old' category. Findings of the present study confirm that the relative age effect should be taken into consideration in studies about sport dropout as a variable that may influence significantly this phenomenon.