A new model of performance classification to standardize the research result in swimming
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/73832Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Ruiz Navarro, Jesús Juan; López Belmonte, Óscar; Gay Párraga, Ana; Cuenca Fernández, Francisco; Arellano Colomina, RaúlEditorial
Taylor & Francis
Materia
Experience Expertises FINA points Comparison
Date
2022-02Referencia bibliográfica
Ruiz-Navarro, J.J., López-Belmonte, O., Gay, A., Cuenca-Fernández, F., & Arellano, R. “A new model of performance classification to standardize the research result in swimming.” Eur. J. Sport. Sci., Feb 2022
Sponsorship
Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport: FPU17/02761, FPU16/02629, and FPU19/02477; Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Spanish Agency of Research) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); PGC2018-102116-B-I00 ‘SWIM II: Specific Water Innovative Measurements: Applied to the performance improvementAbstract
The level of expertise must be defined for the sample studied when report research in sport. Concretely in
swimming, apart from the participants’ background, the competitive status is based on the level that
swimmers participate. Thus, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) points are added to improve
the sample level characterization. The aim of this study was two-fold: 1) to assess whether national and
regional swimmers from different countries differ in their performance level (based on FINA points), and
2) to propose a model that allows standardizing the research results in swimming. The FINA points of 5876 participants (males = 2962 and females = 2914) in 100 m butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle
were retrieved from nationals (n = 21) and regionals (n = 44) swimming competitions. One-way analysis
of variance was conducted to test the difference in FINA points between swimmers of different countries.
Significant disparities (100 to 350 FINA points; p<0.001) were observed in national and regional
competitions for male and female swimmers among the different countries analyzed. This could lead to
misleading conclusions when comparing studies with national or regional swimmers from different
countries. In this regard, a new model of performance classification based on national and regional
worldwide competition is proposed. This might be used to standardized the swimming research results.