CiteSpace-Based Visual Analysis of Children's Balance Ability Research in Sports Science

Balance ability is the foundation of children's early motor development and sustainable development, and its research has important theoretical significance and practical value for the functional design of footwear and the establishment of exercise prescription. The CiteSpace software was adopted to visually analyze 527 articles related to children's balance ability in the core database of Web of Science (from 2018 to 2022). Results indicate that the developed countries, such as the United States, occupied a great number of literatures in this field; “children” was the most frequently occurring keyword; 9 clustering labels were formed through the keyword analysis; the most prominent keyword was “physical activity”. The research focuses in this field are as follows: the measurement technique, the relationship between children's balance and their body factors, and the training method. The proposals are as follows: the assessment criteria for balance tests should be unified in future studies; the quantitative analysis should be used to elucidate the intrinsic mechanism of human balance; follow-up studies should be conducted to continuously collect data on postural balance assessment and improve the data information of balance ability exercise prescription.