Background

Does younger involvement in talent promotion programs (TPPs) facilitate the attainment of higher performance levels? This question is the subject of the present meta-analysis. Many national sport systems have established TPPs such as federations’ junior squads (including under-age selection teams) and youth sport academies, and many are making expanding investments in TPPs. TPPs seek to select the most advanced youth high performers at young ages, around puberty or younger, and then strive to further accelerate their performance development. However, studies show 25–55% annual athlete turnover within TPPs. In this context, accelerated biological maturation (puberty, growth spurt), high relative age within one’s birth year, and intensified sport-specific childhood/adolescent practice may boost rapid junior performance, but the effects diminish or are reversed by adulthood. Moreover, expanded opportunity costs and risks (time demands, injury, burnout) imposed on young TPP participants may impair their long-term development and even prematurely terminate their career.

Objective

We aimed to provide robust and generalizable evidence on the effects of early talent promotion on junior and senior performance through a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Methods

A systematic literature search was conducted 18/03–03/04/2023 in SPORTDiscus, ProQuest, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, WorldCat, and Google Scholar. We searched for original studies that compared athletes across defined higher and lower performance levels within defined types of sports, age categories, and sexes, regarding their age at commencement of TPP involvement and reported effect sizes or data needed to compute effects sizes. Mean meta-analytic Cohen’s \(\overline{d }\) was computed separately for junior and senior athletes. Quality of evidence was evaluated using the mixed-methods appraisal tool.

Results

The search yielded k = 51 effect sizes from N = 6233 athletes from a wide range of countries and sports, 82% male and 18% female, from 2009 to 2022. The central finding is that effects on short-term junior performance versus long-term senior performance are opposite, whereby higher-performing junior athletes began TPP involvement at younger ages than lower-performing junior athletes, \(\overline{d }\) = − 0.53. In contrast, higher-performing senior athletes began TPP involvement at older ages than lower-performing senior athletes, \(\overline{d }\) = 0.56. The findings are robust across different TPPs (federation’s junior squad/selection team, youth academy), individual and team sports, and performance levels compared (international, national, regional). The quality of primary studies was high.

Discussion

The findings are consistent with recent meta-analytic evidence that participation patterns predicting early junior success versus long-term senior success are opposite (starting age, main-sport and other-sports practice amounts, age to reach performance ‘milestones’). We discuss theoretical and practical implications of potential selection and ‘treatment’ effects of TPPs.

Conclusions

Consistent across different populations, early TPP involvement is positively correlated with short-term junior performance but is negatively correlated with long-term senior performance.

中文翻译：

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早期人才晋升对初级和高级绩效的影响：系统回顾和荟萃分析

背景

年轻人参与人才晋升计划 (TPP) 是否有助于实现更高的绩效水平？这个问题是本荟萃分析的主题。许多国家体育系统都建立了TPP，例如联合会青少年队（包括未成年选拔队）和青少年体育学院，并且许多国家正在扩大对TPP的投资。TPP寻求在年轻时、青春期左右或更年轻的时候选择最先进的青年高绩效人才，然后努力进一步加速他们的绩效发展。然而，研究表明，TPP 内每年运动员流动率为 25-55%。在这种情况下，加速的生物成熟（青春期、生长突增）、出生年份内的较高相对年龄以及强化特定运动的儿童/青少年练习可能会提高青少年的快速表现，但这种影响会在成年后减弱或逆转。此外，年轻的TPP参与者所承受的机会成本和风险（时间要求、受伤、倦怠）的扩大可能会损害他们的长期发展，甚至过早终止他们的职业生涯。

客观的

我们的目的是通过系统回顾和荟萃分析，为早期人才晋升对初级和高级绩效的影响提供有力且普遍的证据。

方法

2023 年 3 月 18 日至 4 月 3 日，我们在 SPORTDiscus、ProQuest、PsycINFO、PubMed、Scopus、WorldCat 和 Google Scholar 中进行了系统文献检索。我们检索了原始研究，这些研究比较了特定运动类型、年龄类别和性别中特定较高和较低表现水平的运动员，涉及他们开始参与 TPP 时的年龄，以及报告的效应大小或计算效应大小所需的数据。平均元分析 Cohen's \(\overline{d }\)是针对初级和高级运动员分别计算的。使用混合方法评估工具评估证据质量。

结果

从 2009 年到 2022 年，这项搜索 从来自不同国家和体育项目的 N = 6233 名运动员（其中 82% 为男性，18% 为女性）中得出了 k = 51 个效应大小。主要发现是，短期青少年表现与长期表现的 影响术语“高级表现”则相反，表现较高的青少年运动员比表现较低的青少年运动员更早开始参与 TPP，\(\overline{d }\) = − 0.53。相比之下，表现较高的高级运动员比表现较低的高级运动员开始参与 TPP 的年龄更大，\(\overline{d }\) = 0.56。研究结果在不同的 TPP（联合会青少年队/选拔队、青年学院）、个人和团队运动以及比较的表现水平（国际、国家、地区）中都是稳健的。初级研究的质量很高。

讨论

研究结果与最近的荟萃分析证据一致，即预测青少年早期成功与长期成年成功的参与模式是相反的（起始年龄、主要运动和其他运动练习量、达到表现“里程碑”的年龄）。我们讨论了 TPP 的潜在选择和“治疗”效果的理论和实践意义。

结论

在不同人群中一致的是，早期 TPP 参与与短期初级绩效呈正相关，但与长期高级绩效呈负相关。