Comparison of injury rates across three different women's sports based on reports using the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance System24–26
| Soccer | Hockey | Basketball | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part A: from published data21–23 | |||
| Game injuries* | 5373 | 264 | 3556 |
| Games* | 20,447 | 1180 | 45,295 |
| Athletes at risk (AAR†) | 11 | 6 | 5 |
| Athletes participating (AP*‡) | 16.0 | 17.8 | 10.2 |
| (Athletes at risk)/(athletes participating) | 0.69 | 0.34 | 0.49 |
| Game time (Hours) | 1.50 | 1.00 | 0.67 |
| Practice injury rates (per 1000 athlete practices)* | 5.2 | 2.5 | 4.0 |
| Part B: injury rates per 1000 athlete-games (rate ratio across sports§) | |||
| AAR† method | 23.9 (1.00) | 37.3 (1.56) | 15.7 (0.66) |
| AP*‡ method | 16.4 (1.00) | 12.6 (0.77) | 7.7 (0.47) |
| Part C: injury rates per 1000 h of athlete-game-hours (rate ratio across sports§) | |||
| AAR† method | 15.9 (1.00) | 37.3 (2.35) | 23.4 (1.47) |
| AP‡ method | 10.9 (1.00) | 12.6 (1.16) | 11.5 (1.06) |
| Part D: injury rate ratio for games versus practice* | |||
| AAR† method | 4.6 | 14.9 | 3.9 |
| AP*‡ method | 3.2 | 5.0 | 1.9 |
↵* Taken from publications using the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) injury surveillance system.
↵† AAR, athletes at risk. The number of athletes at risk is the number of athletes on the playing field at any one time since these are the only athletes actually at risk of being injured.
‡ AP, athletes participating. Some authors consider AP as the number of athletes who actually played during the game and others the number of athletes on the roster (eligible to play in the game). The reports from the NCAA data used athletes who played in the games27 and provided whole numbers only.24,–,26 The numbers in the table represent average values calculated by dividing the number of injuries by the product of the reported injury rate and number of games.
↵§ For parts B and C, soccer injury rates serve as the reference standard for the other sports when calculating rate ratios.