Faculty
Science
Supervisor Name
Dr. Trevor Birmingham, Dr. Alan Getgood
Keywords
activity, exposure, acl, hto, sport, athlete, injury
Description
Background: When investigating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent recurrence of sports injuries, measuring exposure time (the time an athlete is at risk of injury) is crucial. The most accurate method of measuring exposure time involves hiring personnel to stand field side during practices and games to record minutes at risk. However, this does not capture other activities in which the athlete may take part that are not part of their formal sport that may put them at risk of re-injury. Another means to collect this data is to ask the athlete to self-report exposure. However, self-report diaries are often poorly adhered to. There are Smartphone apps that track step count, step intensity, and other activity parameters that may serve as a proxy for exposure time. Research Question: What is the magnitude of the association between activity parameters measured using the myrecovery© Smartphone app and detailed activity journals collected through self-report and interview data. Methods: We will purposefully select 60 athletes from the FKSMC. Athletes will be of various sex, age, sport, activity level (none, recreational, competitive, varsity/elite). Participants will agree to track their daily exposure to activity for 4 weeks and join the myrecovery© app for the same period of time. Athletes will be encouraged to carry their phone at all times unless it is not permitted by the rules of the game. We will use regression to estimate the predictive validity of the myrecovery© app for the self-reported data. Significance of the anticipated findings: Its possible that because athletes cannot carry their phone during games and possibly practices, that the app will be poorly correlated with exposure time. Its also possible that individuals who partake in a higher activity level are more active in general such that the association will be moderate to high. If we can identify a relatively low burden method to approximate exposure time, we anticipate huge uptake world wide by those needing to capture exposure time. Being able to capture exposure time with relatively low burden would mean that resources could be spent conducting larger, more impactful studies rather than smaller studies where exposure time data has to be collected at field side (resource intensive).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Trevor Birmingham, Dr. Alan Getgood, FKSMC and the Western USRI program for their expertise and support this summer. I am so grateful for the opportunity and I have learned so much.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Poster
Included in
The Validity of a Smartphone App (myrecovery©) to Serve as Proxy for Activity Level in Athletes
Background: When investigating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent recurrence of sports injuries, measuring exposure time (the time an athlete is at risk of injury) is crucial. The most accurate method of measuring exposure time involves hiring personnel to stand field side during practices and games to record minutes at risk. However, this does not capture other activities in which the athlete may take part that are not part of their formal sport that may put them at risk of re-injury. Another means to collect this data is to ask the athlete to self-report exposure. However, self-report diaries are often poorly adhered to. There are Smartphone apps that track step count, step intensity, and other activity parameters that may serve as a proxy for exposure time. Research Question: What is the magnitude of the association between activity parameters measured using the myrecovery© Smartphone app and detailed activity journals collected through self-report and interview data. Methods: We will purposefully select 60 athletes from the FKSMC. Athletes will be of various sex, age, sport, activity level (none, recreational, competitive, varsity/elite). Participants will agree to track their daily exposure to activity for 4 weeks and join the myrecovery© app for the same period of time. Athletes will be encouraged to carry their phone at all times unless it is not permitted by the rules of the game. We will use regression to estimate the predictive validity of the myrecovery© app for the self-reported data. Significance of the anticipated findings: Its possible that because athletes cannot carry their phone during games and possibly practices, that the app will be poorly correlated with exposure time. Its also possible that individuals who partake in a higher activity level are more active in general such that the association will be moderate to high. If we can identify a relatively low burden method to approximate exposure time, we anticipate huge uptake world wide by those needing to capture exposure time. Being able to capture exposure time with relatively low burden would mean that resources could be spent conducting larger, more impactful studies rather than smaller studies where exposure time data has to be collected at field side (resource intensive).