Abstract

Effective prevention of sports injuries presupposes an adequate aetiological knowledge. Although experiments are the most suitable to study cause-effect relationships, oberservational studies are often the only option that is feasible. This article deals with an important problem of observational designs: besides the risk factor studied, a number of other risk factors will usually differ between the groups which are compared. The resulting confounding can be eliminated by performing a stratified analysis or a logistic regression. The strength of the association between a risk factor and the riks of injury should be expressed in the form of a relative risk or an odds ratio with a confidence interval. The theoretical considerations are illustrated by (fictive) examples from a case-control study on the risk factors for horse riding injury. Verf.-Referat