ArticleInternational journal of environmental research and public health2021
Relative Age Effect in Physical Fitness of South Portugal Students between 10 and 18 Years Old.
Article in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associations Between Relative Age, Siblings, and Motor Competence in Children and Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Relative Age Effect (RAE) According to Norm Values on Anthropometric Performance and Physical Fitness in 9-11-Year-Old Children.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Article
- Associations between Agility, the Relative Age Effect, Siblings, and Digit Ratio (D2:D4) in Children and Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The Effect of Age, Biological Maturation and Birth Quartile in the Kinanthropometric and Physical Fitness Differences between Male and Female Adolescent Volleyball Players.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Relative age is a phenomenon broadly studied in sport sciences. Youth sports participants born earlier in the selection year tend to present a maturational advantage over their peers. As it is also dependent on physical performance, older physical education students may also benefit from this effect in this school subject. The main goal of this manuscript was to determine whether the relative age effect is present within physical fitness outcomes of Portuguese children and adolescents. The physical-aerobic fitness, strength, flexibility and body composition of 885 students (490 females and 395 males) were collected and compared by quarters of birth, segmented by gender and age groups (10-12; 12-14; 14-16 and 16-18 years). The results reveal a moderate to small effect in physical fitness outcomes, with a trend for children and adolescents born in the early part of the year to present higher performance levels. These differences were more evident in ages closer to the physical maturational onset (12-14 y) and more apparent in male students. This physical fitness advantage may lead to a biased assessment and development of students born earlier in the year.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.