SCOPING REVIEW ON STRESS-INJURY RELATIONS IN ATHLETIC AND OCCUPATIONAL CONTEXTS
Open Access
- Author:
- Singh, Harnoor
- Area of Honors:
- Kinesiology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- David E Conroy, Thesis Supervisor
Jessica Lynn Schultz, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Stress
Injury
Athletic
Occupational
Athletic injury
Occupational Injury - Abstract:
- Injury is a pervasive, expensive and, to some extent, preventable problem. The National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey stated that in 2011, there were 40.2 million injury-related visits to the emergency department. Well-established factors that contribute to injury vulnerability include training volume and fitness. Psychological factors, such as stress responses, also contribute to injury risk but less is known about these risk factors. This paper presents a scoping review of the literature on stress-related injury in athletic and occupational environments. A multi-step screening process of four databases (Sport Discus, Psychinfo, Pubmed, and Web of Science) shortened a list of 1895 papers to a total of 56 quantitative studies – 34 from athletic contexts and 22 from occupational contexts – that examined relations between stress and injury. Studies were coded for demographic characteristics of the sample, strength of research design, stress and injury measures used, and conclusions about stress-injury relations. Studies used prospective (60.6%), cross-sectional (26.8%), and case control (12.5%) research designs. All studies were graded as being relatively low quality with scores of 0 (69.2%) or 1 (30.7%). Injury was most frequently defined as missing one subsequent day of training or work (35.7%). Approximately 75% of the studies indicated a positive association between negative affective reactivity and injury risk. Given the diversity of stress and injury measures and surveillance periods, caution is warranted when interpreting meta-analyses of this research.