Background Intentional injury (abuse) prevention efforts in sport can benefit from empirical data, but evidence delineating victim-, perpetrator-, and sport-setting-related risk factors over time, are limited. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, which houses a national-level database of disciplinary cases across American sports, provides opportunity to expand this evidence base.

Objective Identify abuse patterns in the U.S. Center for SafeSport Centralized Disciplinary Database (CDD).

Design Retrospective analysis of CDD cases. An alpha of 0.05 was used to test for significance.

Setting SafeSport CDD.

Patients (or Participants) 1164 CDD cases issued between January 1st, 1980 and January 16th, 2020.

Interventions (or Assessment of Risk Factors) Variables including year, sport, victim gender, team structure, uniform coverage, contact level, gender culture, gender structure, and subjective judging were analyzed, and their association with cases, identified.

Main Outcome Measurements Exploratory data analysis, with additional analyses on cases explicitly mentioning sexual harassment or abuse, or involvement of a minor. Comparisons were analyzed with chi-square.

Results 680 of 1164 cases were adjudicated in 2017 or later. 40 distinct sports were represented, including one Paralympic sport (Athletics). USA Gymnastics (217), Swimming (185), and Ice Hockey (110) had the most cases.

532 of 1164 cases mentioned sexual misconduct or sexual harassment. There was an association between this and individual sports (p<0.01), lower levels of clothing (p<0.01), non-contact sports (p<0.01), gender culture (p<0.01), and sports with subjective judging (p<0.01). 473 out of 1164 cases mentioned the involvement of a minor. There was an association between this and high clothing levels (p<0.01) and gender culture (p<0.01).

Conclusions CDD reports are associated with sport characteristics such as team structure, contact level, and presence of subjective judging. These may represent true risk factors for misconduct or a stronger culture of reporting. Implications for intentional injury (abuse) prevention are clear.