A new model of performance classification to standardize the research results in swimming

This study was supported by the 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 improvement’ and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport: FPU17/02761, FPU16/02629, and FPU19/02477 grant. This article is a part of an international thesis belonging to the Program of PhD in Biomedicine (B11.56.1), from the University of Granada, Granada (Spain)
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
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 improvement