Changes in the Health of Adolescent Athletes: A Comparison of Health Measures Collected Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In spring 2020, schools closed to in-person teaching and sports were cancelled to control the transmission of COVID-19. The changes that affected the physical and mental health among young athletes during this time remain unknown.

Objective

To identify changes in the health (mental health, physical activity, and quality of life) of athletes that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Setting

Sample recruited via social media.

Patients or Other Participants

A total of 3243 Wisconsin adolescent athletes (age = 16.2 ± 1.2 years, 58% female) were surveyed in May 2020 (During COVID-19). Measures for this cohort were compared with previously reported data for Wisconsin adolescent athletes (n = 5231; age = 15.7 ± 1.2 years, 47% female) collected in 2016 to 2018 (PreCOVID-19).

Main Outcome Measure(s)

Demographic information included sex, grade, and sport(s) played. Health assessments included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 Item to identify depression symptoms, the Pediatric Functional Activity Brief Scale to gauge physical activity, and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 to evaluate health-related quality of life. Univariable comparisons of these variables between groups were conducted via t or χ2 tests. Means and 95% CIs for each group were estimated using survey-weighted analysis-of-variance models.

Results

Compared with preCOVID-19 participants, a larger proportion of During COVID-19 participants reported moderate to severe levels of depression (9.7% versus 32.9%, P < .001). Scores of the During COVID-19 participants were 50% lower (worse) on the Pediatric Functional Activity Brief Scale (mean [95% CI] = 12.2 [11.9, 12.5] versus 24.7 [24.5, 24.9], P < .001) and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 compared with the PreCOVID-19 participants (78.4 [78.0, 78.8] versus 90.9 [90.5, 91.3], P < .001).

Conclusions

During the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescent athletes described increased symptoms of depression, decreased physical activity, and decreased quality of life compared with adolescent athletes in previous years.

SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.12.20248726: (What is this?)

Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

Table 1: Rigor

Institutional Review Board Statement	IRB: This study was approved by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Health Sciences Institutional Review Board in April of 2020.
Randomization	not detected.
Blinding	not detected.
Power Analysis	not detected.
Sex as a biological variable	Wisconsin adolescent athletes (male and female, grade: 9–12, age:13-19) were recruited via social media (Facebook, Twitter) to participate in the study by completing an anonymous online survey in May 2020.

Table 2: Resources

No key resources detected.

Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:

Limitations: This study has several limitations. First, the data provided were self-reported from online surveys and not the result of a clinical examination conducted by a health care provider. Nonetheless, our findings include a large sample of athletes and align with reports from experts who have stated that CoVID-19 will impact the health of youth populations.13,16,17,25,26 Second, we acknowledge that there may be a response bias for participants. We cannot know for certain if the sample is representative of all Wisconsin adolescent athletes or biased towards athletes who were more likely to respond if they experienced the most profound impacts on their health. Third, due to the survey delivery method, our sample may be biased toward athletes from higher socioeconomic families with easy access to internet services and social media platforms. We could not eliminate this bias, but we did collect results from 99% of Wisconsin counties, which span a wide range of socioeconomic levels. Further, we utilized medical colleagues as well as the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association and the Wisconsin Athletic Trainers’ Association to publicize the study and urge all adolescent athletes to participate. In addition, we used recent high school sport participation statistics from Wisconsin schools to calculate sample weights to mitigate the potential effects of selection bias. This increased the representativeness of our results to the entire adolescent athlete population in Wi...

Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

Results from rtransparent:

Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
No protocol registration statement was detected.

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