The importance and role of demographic identifiers on the development of elite female gymnasts in the United States.
Conceptual definition
The USA National gymnastics team is made up of both a junior team and a senior team. Age, as well as skill level, performance, and body type determine whether a gymnast is chosen for the national elite team (USA Gymnastics). However, certain criteria—skill level, for instance—might be determined not by the work ethic of the athlete, but by the month in which the athlete was born and the location that the athlete was born. Tracking these correlational trends will give the researchers a better understanding of the underlying factors that might potentially influence the overall skill level of a potential elite gymnast, and determine what subtle characteristics contribute to their success.
Controversial aspects of the conceptual definition
One of the good things about discussing gymnastics is that there are coherent numerical rankings for the athletes who compete at the highest levels: the international gymnastics community has a well-defined system that determines which athletes are the best in the world, and how to obtain those rankings. However, there is also some element of subjectivity to these rankings, because at its heart, gymnastics is still an artistic endeavor. The question to be investigated, then, is the question of what makes an elite gymnast. All of these athletes have unique backgrounds, of course—they are all individuals—but the purpose of this discussion will be to investigate the similarities and determine the correlative effects between different demographic factors. Thousands of little girls begin in the USA Gymnastics affiliate programs each year, but only a handful are chosen from these thousands to make up the junior and senior teams. Currently, there are twenty-one athletes on the roster, and many of these athletes share interesting similarities in demographics and background. The purpose of the discussion here will be to determine if where or when a child is born affects whether or not she will be more likely to be chosen for the USA Gymnastics’ elite team.
Two operational definitions
General Discussion:
All of these athletes have proven that they can compete at the highest level of gymnastics, but there are hundreds of athletes in the highest levels of artistic gymnastics in the United States. Despite the depth of this pool, these athletes have been chosen to be on this elite team. USA Gymnastics keeps an extensive record of each athlete’s accomplishments at various meets, but home state and birth month are two correlational factors that are not commonly considered when trying to determine the overall reason for the skill level of a gymnast. There are, perhaps, reasons why these two measures might be correlated: for instance, certain locations have more active gymnastics facilities and communities than others.
Measurement procedures: Home State
Home state is something that, interestingly, immediately became apparent upon looking at the information provided by USA Gymnastics regarding the current elite team. While there is some variation in the information provided, there are certainly visual trends regarding the location where these athletes were born and raised. This might have a significant impact on the likelihood that a child will grow up to be part of the elite group of gymnasts that make up the national team. For the purposes of analysis, the different states have been assigned numerical values. The lowest values in the scale have been assigned to states occurring with the highest frequency; the highest values in the scale have been assigned to the states appearing only once. A score of “4” has been assigned to unique birth states, while a score of “1” is assigned to the state appearing most frequently. When different states appear the same number of times, they are assigned the same numerical value.
Birth Month
Birthday may have any number of effects on an athlete’s development. It may determine whether that athlete is older (more mature) for his or her age group or younger (less mature and less developed) than others in their age group. Brief visual scanning of the birthdays for elite gymnasts demonstrated that there was some grouping and clustering around certain months (McDougall). The birth month information has been presented numerically, using the traditional Gregorian calendar integer representation. Each case, then, represents an individual athlete on the roster; the athlete’s birth month and home state are correlated with her case number.
Data
Scatterplot
Validity issues of the operational definitions
Home State
The numbers associated with the gymnasts’ home states are associated based on frequency. The most frequent home states are denoted with the lowest numbers—New Jersey and Texas are the most frequently represented in this sample—with the outliers arbitrarily designated as the higher numbers (Florida, Utah, Minnesota and Arizona).
Birth Month
There seem to be clusters around certain times of year: for instance, there are many January, February, and March birthdays, but there are also clusters of birthdays in the late summer. Fall and midsummer birthdays are hardly represented at all in this sample; there are certainly trends regarding birth month in this sample of athletes.
General Discussion:
This discussion demonstrates that skill level is not necessarily determined by genetic potential alone. Because the athletes are clustered around different geographical locations as well as different birthdays, there are very real sociological and geographical influences that might be impacting the individual athletes and their development before they become a part of the USA Gymnastics national team. Interestingly, these demographic factors themselves—the birth month and the birth location of the athlete—do not seem to be as closely linked as the overarching trends themselves do. For instance, case six is an athlete born in the winter cluster of athletes, but she is an athlete from an outlying state. Case eight, on the other hand, is an athlete from the largest state cluster—Texas—with a birth month outside the midwinter and late summer cluster (June). There are very interesting trends at work here, and the evidence suggests that there are alternative driving forces for the development of these athletes over time.
Works Cited
McDougall, Chris. "Meet The 2015 U.S. Women's Gymnastics Worlds Team". Team USA. N. p., 2016. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
USA Gymnastics. "USA Gymnastics | Women's Artistic Gymnastics National Team".Usagym.org. N. p., 2016. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. https://usagym.org/pages/athletes/womenList.html
