Abstract
BackgroundIt is well known that the condition and type of sporting ground influences the risk of sports injury. However, the lack of evidence on the relationship between subjective and objective sporting ground condition assessments in sports injury aetiology studies has implications for the development of effective injury prevention strategies. This paper aims to examine concordance between subjectively rated and objective ground hardness and moisture measurements to inform data collection methods for future sports injury aetiology studies.MethodsSubjective, observational assessments of ground hardness and soil moisture were recorded on 36 occasions during an Australian football season using two four-point scales of ‘very soft’ to ‘very hard’ and ‘very wet’ to ‘very dry’, respectively. Independent, objectively measured hardness and soil moisture were also undertaken at nine locations on the same grounds. The maximum and minimum ground values and the computed average of ground hardness and soil moisture were analysed. Somer’s d statistic was calculated to measure the level of concordance between the subjective and objective measures.ResultsA significant, moderate to substantial level of agreement was found between the subjective ratings and the average objective hardness values (d = 0.467, p <0.001), but there was perfect agreement on just less than half of the occasions. The level of concordance between the subjective and objective moisture ratings was low to moderate or trivial for all moisture measures (0.002 < d <0.264, p >0.05).ConclusionsCompared to objective measures, the subjective assessments were more accurate for ground hardness than for soil moisture levels and raters were just as likely to underestimate or overestimate the condition under review. This has implications for future sports injury aetiology studies that include ground condition assessments and particularly the use of subjective measures to underpin the development of future injury prevention strategies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40621-014-0027-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
It is well known that the condition and type of sporting ground influences the risk of sports injury
This study was nested within the Preventing Australian Football Injuries through Exercise (PAFIX) group-clustered randomised controlled trial and involved both subjective and objective assessments of ground hardness and soil moisture in a sample of the sporting grounds from Victoria (Australia) where the trial was conducted
Rated ground hardness has been linked to injury risk in many sports injury epidemiology studies; the strength of the potential injury risk factors is dependent on the quality and accuracy of the measures used, and the validity of subjective assessment in this context is yet to be reported (Petrass and Twomey 2013)
Summary
It is well known that the condition and type of sporting ground influences the risk of sports injury. The lack of evidence on the relationship between subjective and objective sporting ground condition assessments in sports injury aetiology studies has implications for the development of effective injury prevention strategies. A limitation of the subjective ground studies is that they could be subject to bias and confounding due to factors which have not been measured and reported in previous studies These factors include such things as the footwear worn by the assessor, the specific locations assessed on the ground, or innate perceptual differences between observers (Petrass and Twomey 2013). Knowledge of whether subjective measures accurately reflect objective measures of ground hardness is needed This knowledge would inform appropriate ground condition data collection in sports injury surveillance studies that aim to determine the relationship between ground hardness and sports injury risk
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