Assessment of Female Student athlete's Awareness and Performance of Injury Prevention Strategies

The purpose of this investigation was to assess female student athlete's awareness and performance of injury prevention strategies. Retrospective study of 290 female students (Means±SD; Age 21/4 ±1/8) participating in eight university Olympiads in Kerman. The means of data collection was a modified version of Hawkins and Fuller (1998) questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, T- test, ANOVA, LSD, and Pearson product correlation were used to analyze the data. The results of this study indicated that female student athletes had highest awareness (4/57 ± 0/55) and performance (4/65 ± 0/56) a bout Warm-up, and the lowest awareness and performance about nutrition (3/61± 1/07), Flexibility (1/5 ± 0/60) and strengthening exercises (1/05 ± 0/57). No significant difference was found between different athletes in terms of awareness. Performance of Basketball and indoors soccer players was higher than other players. Physical education students had better injury prevention performance (3/22±0/69). No significant different was found between national and non-national athletes in terms of injury prevention awareness and performance (p>0/5). The results of this study showed that female student athletes had lowest awareness about nutrition and also their lowest performance in Flexibility and strength training. Conduction of workshops and conferences in the risk factor and injury prevention could improve athletes and coache's awareness about sport injuries.