Contribution of sex, sports and activity types and curriculum load distribution to intracurricular injury risk in physical education teacher education: a cohort study

Objectives To investigate the influence of sports/activity types and their distribution over the curriculum years on intracurricular injury risk differences between curriculum years and sexes in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) studies.Methods In a cohort study over 14 years (2000–2014), injuries reported at the medical facility of a Dutch vocational institute by PETE students who completed their full curriculum were registered. Intracurricular injury rates (IR) per 1000 hours and 95% CIs were calculated per sport, sex and curriculum year and compared with injury rate ratios (RR) and 95% CI. Exposure times per sports category per curriculum year were compared with the χ2 test.Results Intracurricular IR was highest for gymnastics, team ball sports and track and field (0.76–1.23, 95% CI 0.65 to 1.45). IRs were higher for female compared with male students (RR 2.38, 95% CI 1.97 to 2.87). Comparisons for all individual sports and for all three curriculum years showed the same pattern. IR for the first year was higher than for the second (RR 1.79, 95% CI 1.45 to 2.21) and third year (RR 2.74, 95% CI 2.13 to 3.54) with similar patterns for all sports categories. Over the curriculum years, exposure time distributions per sport showed small differences (p