Tails of the Travelling Gaussian model and the relative age effect: Tales of age discrimination and wasted talent
Tails of the Travelling Gaussian model and the relative age effect: Tales of age discrimination and wasted talent
The Relative Age Effect (RAE) documents the inherent disadvantages of being younger rather than older in an age-banded cohort, typically a school- or competition-year, to the detriment of career-progression, earnings and wellbeing into adulthood. We develop the Tails of the Travelling Gaussian (TTG) to model the mechanisms behind RAE. TTG has notable advantages over existing approaches, which have been largely descriptive, potentially confounded, and non-comparable across contexts. In Study 1, using data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study, we investigate the different levels of RAE bias across school-level academic subjects and “personality” traits. Study 2 concerns biased admissions to elite English Premier League soccer academies, and shows the model can still be used with minimal data. We also develop two practical metrics: the discrimination index (ID), to quantify the disadvantages facing cohort-younger children; and the wastage metric (W), to quantify the loss through untapped potential. TTG is sufficiently well-specified to simulate the consequences of ID and W for policy change.
Doyle, John
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Bottomley, Paul
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Angell, Robert
ca8389e4-2a83-43a8-b331-c262eda37674
20 April 2017
Doyle, John
595b8321-88f8-4eea-ad2f-3f7116ed60a9
Bottomley, Paul
b825f075-8eda-4890-b524-205bf9898288
Angell, Robert
ca8389e4-2a83-43a8-b331-c262eda37674
Doyle, John, Bottomley, Paul and Angell, Robert
(2017)
Tails of the Travelling Gaussian model and the relative age effect: Tales of age discrimination and wasted talent.
PLoS ONE, 12 (4), [e0176206].
(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0176206).
Abstract
The Relative Age Effect (RAE) documents the inherent disadvantages of being younger rather than older in an age-banded cohort, typically a school- or competition-year, to the detriment of career-progression, earnings and wellbeing into adulthood. We develop the Tails of the Travelling Gaussian (TTG) to model the mechanisms behind RAE. TTG has notable advantages over existing approaches, which have been largely descriptive, potentially confounded, and non-comparable across contexts. In Study 1, using data from the UK’s Millennium Cohort Study, we investigate the different levels of RAE bias across school-level academic subjects and “personality” traits. Study 2 concerns biased admissions to elite English Premier League soccer academies, and shows the model can still be used with minimal data. We also develop two practical metrics: the discrimination index (ID), to quantify the disadvantages facing cohort-younger children; and the wastage metric (W), to quantify the loss through untapped potential. TTG is sufficiently well-specified to simulate the consequences of ID and W for policy change.
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journal.pone.0176206
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Accepted/In Press date: 6 April 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 20 April 2017
Published date: 20 April 2017
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Local EPrints ID: 426001
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/426001
ISSN: 1932-6203
PURE UUID: c42620ea-d8d6-4850-ad74-47f1bfc96e32
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Date deposited: 09 Nov 2018 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:38
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Author:
John Doyle
Author:
Paul Bottomley
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