Sourcing

How we source benchmarks

Every number on this site follows the same rules. They cost us pages other sites happily publish - and they are the reason a number from Athlete Quotient means something.

The rules

A benchmark ships only with a verified source behind it. Peer-reviewed research, official governing-body statistics, and published institutional data qualify. A recruiting service's marketing chart does not. When a sport's public data cannot support a ladder yet, that sport waits - football's ladder is being rebuilt against peer-reviewed sources right now rather than published on guesses.

Rungs are level markers, never invented averages. Our tables name rungs - D1, D2, D3, HS varsity - because that is what the underlying sources support. We do not label a number as "the average D1 athlete" unless a source actually measured that average.

Gaps are admitted, not filled. Where no trustworthy public number exists - and for several widely quoted youth-sports metrics, none does - the metric is excluded and we say so. A missing number is honest. A fabricated one is not.

By position, because that is how sports work. Almost nobody plays "age." The bar for a setter is not the bar for a libero, so our ladders are built by position wherever sources allow it.

One data pipeline. The tables on these pages are exported from the same benchmark tables the AQ scoring engine reads. The website never types a number by hand, so the pages cannot drift from real scores.

What we publish and what we do not

We publish the benchmark ladders - the standards themselves - for every sourced sport and metric, free, with no signup. We do not publish the internals of how the AQ Score is computed from them. The standards are public on purpose; the scoring method is the product.

Citing AQ

Reporters, coaches, clubs and researchers are welcome to cite these tables with attribution to Athlete Quotient and a link. For embeds, the free widget stays in sync with our tables automatically. Questions about a specific number's source: ask, and we will point you at it.