Abstract
Background:
Patient sex is known to affect patient outcomes in sports medicine. Historically, many studies on athletes have focused on male athletes and been generalized to female athletes.
Hypothesis:
Studies with female first or senior authors will isolate female athletes as study participants more frequently than studies with male first or senior authors.
Study Design:
Systematic review; Level of evidence, 4.
Methods:
Following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocols, original research studies published between 2017 and 2021 that analyzed athletes were systematically screened from the 6 top sports medicine journals (
Results:
A total of 1146 studies were included in quantitative analysis. There were 246 studies with a female first author (21.5%) and 191 studies with a female senior author (16.7%). When looking at all authors (first, senior, and intermediate), 19.9% were female. Female first authors were over 4 times more likely to isolate female athletes in clinical research than male first authors (17.5% vs 3.8%, respectively;
Conclusion:
Female first authors were significantly more likely to perform research isolating female athletes. While improving the frequency of female athlete research is multifactorial, increasing the number of female researchers may have a direct effect on improving gender equality in sports medicine research.
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