An age-old debate – rugby versus soccer

A few years ago a National IQ Test was conducted during a live TV show in Australia. Questions measuring intelligence were asked on the show and viewers were able to provide answers via a special website. People completing the online questionnaire were also asked to provide some information about themselves such as their preferred football code. When the results of the test were published it was revealed that rugby union fans were, on average, two points smarter than soccer fans. Now two points does not seem to be an especially big difference – it was actually smaller than the gap separating mums from dads – but the difference was big enough to trigger no small amount of gloating from vociferous rugby watchers. As far as these fans were concerned, two percentage points was large enough to substantiate a number of stereotypes regarding the mental capabilities of people who watch soccer.

How large does an effect have to be for it to be important, useful, or meaningful? As the National IQ story shows, the answer to this question depends a lot on who is doing the asking. Rugby fans interpreted a 2-point difference in IQ as meaningful, legitimate, and significant. Soccer fans no doubt interpreted the difference as trivial, meaningless, and insignificant.