Sports demography: demographic analysis applied to populations of athletes

Petra Dupalová, Charles University in Prague

This poster briefly introduces selected demographic methods and their application in sports, especially in athletics. Survival analysis is mainly used for calculations. Survival analysis is a set of statistical methods for examination of the time duration of occurrences of the studied (observed) events, which in this case will capture the best performance in the TOP career or termination of TOP career. Analysis is applied to data corresponding with the length of the TOP sports career rather than length of life of the individual. This means life tables showing the length of the TOP careers of men and women in various disciplines, increase of the TOP careers of men and women, and the rest of the TOP careers of men and women by age at the best performance were calculated. The analysis showed that women reach the TOP ten performances of their careers at a younger age than men (on average 1.6 years earlier). Men who are dedicated to throw discipline are called throwers. Throwers are different from the majority in the each group. (We compared throwers with runners and jumpers with the greatest variability in the age at where they reach the TOP level careers.) Sports "life tables" are demonstrating that men are in the early years after the TOP level expected a little longer career than women. After about three years in the TOP level change occurs and in subsequent years women are recording longer career. The results of survival function confirmed that the performance of men and women in various age groups and in individual disciplines are different The TOP careers of individual groups also differ in expected duration. The results achieved have confirmed that the methods of demographic analysis are applicable in the field of sports.