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Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: Home advantage in professional sports is a widely accepted phenomenon despite the lack of any controlled experiments at the professional level. The return to play of professional sports during the COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to analyze the hypothesized effect of home advantage in neutral settings. While recent work has examined the effect of COVID-19 restrictions on home advantage in European football, comparatively few studies have examined the effect of restrictions in the North American professional sports leagues. In this work, we infer the effect of and changes in home advantage prior to and during COVID-19 in the professional North American leagues for hockey, basketball, baseball, and American football. We propose a Bayesian multi-level regression model that infers the effect of home advantage while accounting for relative team strengths. We also demonstrate that the Negative Binomial distribution is the most appropriate likelihood to use in modelling North American sports leagues as they are prone to overdispersion in their points scored. Our model gives strong evidence that home advantage was negatively impacted in the NHL and NBA during their strongly restricted COVID-19 playoffs, while the MLB and NFL showed little to no change during their weakly restricted COVID-19 seasons.

SUBMITTER: Higgs N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8282683 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The main factors for home advantage (HA), quantified by the number of points won at home expressed as a percentage of all points, are believed to be crowd support, territoriality, familiarity, and travel fatigue. In 2020, the German Soccer Bundesliga interrupted its championship due to the Covid-19 pandemic after 25 rounds and the last nine rounds were played without audience. This unique situation allowed studying the effect of spectators on the team's performance and the referee's decisions. We hypothesized a decrease in HA and a more balanced distribution of fouls and disciplinary cards in the games without audience (GWOA) compared to the games with audience (GWA). We evaluated n = 223 GWA and n = 83 GWOA of the season 2019/20 and all games of the preceding season 2018/19 to analyze the distribution of game outcomes (wins, losses, and draws) and HA. We analyzed the number of fouls, disciplinary cards, and penalty kicks. We found significant differences in HA between GWA (HA = 54.35%) and GWOA (HA = 44.1%) as well as GWOA and games of 2018/19 (HA = 57.63%). The distribution of game outcomes in GWOA did not differ from GWA but differed significantly from 2018/19 (p = 0.031). The distribution of fouls showed a significant difference to equal distribution in GWA [home: 2,595 (48.56%); away: 2,749 (51.44%)] but not in GWOA [home: 1,067 (50.54%); away: 1,044 (49.46%)]. In the GWOA, we counted 178 (51.1%, home) and 170 (48.9%, away) cards, representing a significant difference in the distribution to GWA [home: 405 (44.85%); away: 498 (55.15%)]. The number of red cards differed significantly from an equal distribution for GWA (14 home and 28 away) but not for GWOA (eight home and seven away). In the last nine rounds without audience, we observed more home losses (36) than home wins (27). Hence, the Covid-19 lock-down led to a home disadvantage. One reason for this surprising result could be that the home team is missing an important familiar aspect when playing in their empty stadium without social support from their home audience. Furthermore, both teams know about the HA thus the away team could be more motivated in this unusual situation.

Project description:Publishing is a strong determinant of academic success and there is compelling evidence that identity may influence the academic writing experience and writing output. However, studies rarely quantitatively assess the effects of major life upheavals on trainee writing. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented life disruptions that may have disproportionately impacted different demographics of trainees. We analyzed anonymous survey responses from 342 North American environmental biology graduate students and postdoctoral scholars (hereafter trainees) about scientific writing experiences to assess: (1) how identity interacts with scholarly publication totals and (2) how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced trainee perceptions of scholarly writing productivity and whether there were differences among identities. Interestingly, identity had a strong influence on publication totals, but it differed by career stage with graduate students and postdoctoral scholars often having opposite results. We found that trainees identifying as female and those with chronic health conditions or disabilities lag in publication output at some point during training. Additionally, although trainees felt they had more time during the pandemic to write, they reported less productivity and motivation. Trainees who identified as female; Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color [BIPOC]; and as first-generation college graduates were much more likely to indicate that the pandemic affected their writing. Disparities in the pandemic's impact on writing were most pronounced for BIPOC respondents; a striking 85% of BIPOC trainees reported that the pandemic affected their writing habits, and overwhelmingly felt unproductive and unmotivated to write. Our results suggest that the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on writing output may only heighten the negative effects commonly reported amongst historically excluded trainees. Based on our findings, we encourage the academy to consider how an overemphasis on publication output during hiring may affect historically excluded groups in STEM-especially in a post-COVID-19 era.

Project description:BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted many aspects of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) care, including timely access to primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI).ObjectivesThe goal of the NACMI (North American COVID-19 and STEMI) registry is to describe demographic characteristics, management strategies, and outcomes of COVID-19 patients with STEMI.MethodsA prospective, ongoing observational registry was created under the guidance of 3 cardiology societies. STEMI patients with confirmed COVID+ (group 1) or suspected (person under investigation [PUI]) (group 2) COVID-19 infection were included. A group of age- and sex-matched STEMI patients (matched to COVID+ patients in a 2:1 ratio) treated in the pre-COVID era (2015 to 2019) serves as the control group for comparison of treatment strategies and outcomes (group 3). The primary outcome was a composite of in-hospital death, stroke, recurrent myocardial infarction, or repeat unplanned revascularization.ResultsAs of December 6, 2020, 1,185 patients were included in the NACMI registry (230 COVID+ patients, 495 PUIs, and 460 control patients). COVID+ patients were more likely to have minority ethnicity (Hispanic 23%, Black 24%) and had a higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus (46%) (all p < 0.001 relative to PUIs). COVID+ patients were more likely to present with cardiogenic shock (18%) but were less likely to receive invasive angiography (78%) (all p < 0.001 relative to control patients). Among COVID+ patients who received angiography, 71% received PPCI and 20% received medical therapy (both p < 0.001 relative to control patients). The primary outcome occurred in 36% of COVID+ patients, 13% of PUIs, and 5% of control patients (p < 0.001 relative to control patients).ConclusionsCOVID+ patients with STEMI represent a high-risk group of patients with unique demographic and clinical characteristics. PPCI is feasible and remains the predominant reperfusion strategy, supporting current recommendations.

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Bayesian analysis of home advantage in North American professional sports before and during COVID-19.

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