Athletic Injury Research: Frameworks, Models and the Need for Causal Knowledge

AbstractWithin applied sports science and medicine research, many challenges hinder the establishment and detailed understanding of athletic injury causality as well as the development and implementation of appropriate athletic injury prevention strategies. Applied research efforts are faced with a lack of variable control, while the capacity to compensate for this lack of control through the application of randomised controlled trials is often confronted by a number of obstacles relating to ethical or practical constraints. Such difficulties have led to a large reliance upon observational research to guide applied practice in this area. However, the reliance upon observational research, in conjunction with the general absence of supporting causal inference tools and structures, has hindered both the acquisition of causal knowledge in relation to athletic injury and the development of appropriate injury prevention strategies. Indeed, much of athletic injury research functions on a (causal) model-blind observational approach primarily driven by the existence and availability of various technologies and data, with little regard for how these technologies and their associated metrics can conceptually relate to athletic injury causality and mechanisms. In this article, a potential solution to these issues is proposed and a new model for investigating athletic injury aetiology and mechanisms, and for developing and evaluating injury prevention strategies, is presented. This soluti...
Source: Sports Medicine - Category: Sports Medicine Source Type: research