Title | Identify the type and purpose of the study, for example, injury surveillance to measure or intervention to reduce the incidence of injuries. | |
Abstract | Present a structured summary of the study, including Aims, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. | |
Introduction | Discuss background to and aims, objectives, and hypotheses for the study. | |
Methods | Design of study, for example, prospective cohort, randomised controlled trial. | |
| Study population, including the organisational setting and geographic location, the numbers of players and teams involved, age range and sex of participants, level of play, and the duration of the study. | |
| Describe medical personnel involved and the frequency of recording injury and exposure data. | |
| Definitions of injury and exposure used in study. | |
| Planned interventions and the criteria used for selecting the intervention and control groups. | |
| Primary and secondary outcome measures, such as the number of medical attention/time loss injuries, cost of treatment, and the incidence and severity of injuries and recurrences. | |
| Methods used to define the study size in risk factor and intervention studies, for example, power calculations. | |
| Methods, such as training, used to improve the quality of data collection. | |
| Statistical methods used to compare groups and subgroups. | |
Results | Report for the study population and each subgroup assessed: | |
| numbers of match and training injuries, | |
| numbers of match and training recurrences, | |
| match and training exposures. | |
| Present with appropriate statistical information for the study population and each subgroup: | |
| baseline data on the study population, | |
| incidences of match and training injuries, | |
| incidence of recurrences, | |
| severities of match and training injuries, | |
| distributions of injury locations and types for match and training, | |
| cross tabulations of injury locations and types for match and training. | |
| Present, together with inferential statistics, other summary data that are appropriate to the aims and objectives of the study. | |
Discussion | Interpretation of study results, taking into account the study aims, objectives, and hypotheses and the existing evidence in the literature. | |
| Comment on generalisations that can be reached from the study results. | |