Abstract

The goal of this honors thesis was to explore sex differences in the occurrence of collegiate sports injuries in basketball, lacrosse and soccer across three NCAA Division levels. I compared the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) for Division I, the East Coast Conference (ECC) for Division II and the Skyline Conference for Division III. I analyzed sports injury data from six schools: Manhattan College and Quinnipiac University (Division I), Long Island University Post and New York Institute of Technology (Division II), and Farmingdale State College and SUNY Purchase (Division III). I predicted Division I to have a higher number of sports injuries in individual injury categories compared to Division II and Division III and that Division III would have the least number of sport injuries. I also predicted that there would be more sports injuries in males compared to females. I anticipated evidence of sex differences in relation to injury because males display more competitiveness, risk taking, and aggression compared to their female counterparts. There was a total of 928 sports injuries (Basketball: 218, Lacrosse: 439 and Soccer: 271) reported for all six schools (Division I: 530, Division II: 307 and Division III: 91). I organized the sports injuries into eight categories: all injuries, concussions, face to neck, trunk region, spine, arm to fingers, hip to knee and leg to toes. I used the NCAA Division level, sport, sex and total number of man hours for practice and play as factors to conduct several ANOVA tests. I discovered evidence of a statistically significant difference in sports injuries based on NCAA Division level (P-Value < 0.05) but no evidence of a statistically significant difference for sport or sex (P-Value > 0.05). However, I noticed a statistically significant difference in concussion injuries amongst women compared to their male counterparts. This data is important because the results can ultimately improve the overall health and well-being of collegiate athletes.

Keywords

Sex differences, Collegiate Sports injuries, NCAA divisions I, II, and III

Document Type

Thesis

Year of Completion

2019

Advisor

Dr. Kent Hatch

Academic Department

Health Science

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