An interdisciplinary examination of stress and injury occurrence in athletes

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Author
Fisher, Harry
Gittoes, Marianne J.R.
Evans, Lynne
Bitchell, Leah
Mullen, Richard
Scutari, Marco
Date
2020-12-14Acceptance date
2020-10-20
Type
Article
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper adopts a novel, interdisciplinary approach to explore the relationship between
psychosocial factors, physiological stress-related markers and occurrence of injury in athletes
using a repeated measures design across a 2-year data collection period. At three data
collection time-points, athletes completed measures of major life events, the reinforcement
sensitivity theory personality questionnaire, muscle stiffness, heart rate variability and
postural stability, and reported any injuries they had sustained since the last data collection.
Two Bayesian networks were used to examine the relationships between variables and model
the changes between data collection points in the study. Findings revealed muscle stiffness to
have the strongest relationship with injury occurrence, with high levels of stiffness increasing
the probability of sustaining an injury. Negative life events did not increase the probability
of injury occurrence at any single time-point; however, when examining changes between
time points, increases in negative life events did increase the probability of injury. In
addition, the combination of increases in negative life events and muscle stiffness resulted in
the greatest probability of sustaining an injury. Findings demonstrated the importance of
both an interdisciplinary approach and a repeated measures design to furthering our
understanding of the relationship between stress-related markers and injury occurrence.
Journal/conference proceeding
Frontiers in Sports and Active Living;
Description
Article published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living available open access at https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2020.595619
Sponsorship
Cardiff Metropolitan University (Grant ID: Cardiff Metropolian (Internal))
Collections
- Sport Research Groups [1088]
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