High Performance Sport New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand.
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Dec;44(12):2423-7. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e318267c029.
There is need for valid and powerful research designs to assess performance effects of interventions in squads of elite athletes.
The objective of this study is to develop a design for investigating effects on competition performance using performance of athletes in other squads as a control.
We used competition swim times downloaded from USAswimming.org for a season ending in the US Open and assumed an intervention had been applied to athletes in one of the larger squads (Ford) at one competition (Santa Clara). Data were included only for swimmers who achieved >900 Hy-Tek points at the USA Swimming Nationals. Each swimmer's points were used to select their best event. Times for the resulting 368 best-event swims in seven competitions by 148 swimmers in 19 squads were analyzed to determine the uncertainty (90% confidence interval) of the effect of the hypothetical intervention. Further analyses were performed with other selection criteria. Uncertainties were compared with those in other recent studies of competitive senior swimmers.
Uncertainty in the effect of an intervention applied to Ford for Santa Clara would have been ±0.8%. Applying other data-selection criteria resulted in generally more uncertainty. Uncertainties in recent studies of competitive swimmers using conventional designs ranged between ±0.7% and ±2.2%.
For the sport of swimming, the effects with this new design are at least as precise as those of conventional research designs using performance tests, and the outcomes are likely to have higher validity. The new design should be useful for assessing the effect of an intervention representing a substantial change from a baseline of usual practice in any sport where athletes compete often against athletes of other squads.
需要有效的强大研究设计来评估精英运动员小队干预措施的效果。
本研究的目的是开发一种设计，以使用其他小队运动员的表现作为对照来评估比赛表现的效果。
我们使用从 USAswimming.org 下载的游泳比赛时间，这些时间是在美国公开赛结束的一个赛季中，假设在一个比赛（圣克拉拉）中对一个较大的小队（福特）中的运动员应用了一种干预措施。只有在 USA Swimming Nationals 中获得>900 个 Hy-Tek 积分的游泳运动员的数据才包括在内。每个游泳运动员的积分都用于选择他们最好的项目。在 19 个小队的 148 名游泳运动员的 7 项比赛中，对 368 名最佳项目游泳运动员的成绩进行了分析，以确定假设干预的效果的不确定性（90%置信区间）。还使用了其他选择标准进行了进一步分析。将不确定性与最近对竞技高级游泳运动员的其他研究进行了比较。
如果对圣克拉拉的福特应用干预措施，其效果的不确定性将为±0.8%。应用其他数据选择标准通常会导致更大的不确定性。使用常规设计对竞技游泳运动员进行的最近研究中的不确定性在±0.7%至±2.2%之间。
对于游泳运动，使用这种新设计的效果至少与使用表现测试的常规研究设计一样精确，并且结果可能具有更高的有效性。该新设计应可用于评估代表与通常实践的基线相比有重大变化的干预措施对任何经常与其他小队运动员竞争的运动的效果。
