Background: Despite recent research, nonprescription pain medication use among collegiate athletes across all divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is still not well understood.Hypothesis:Non-Division I-A NCAA athletes have a different usage pattern of nonprescription pain medication than NCAA Division I-A football athletes.Methods:A modified version of a nonprescription medication usage survey that had been used with Division I-A football athletes was distributed to Division II and Division III athletes during pre-participation exams. The statistics were analyzed by calculating the z-ratio for the significance of the difference between 2 independent proportions.Results:A total of 198 athletes from 16 different sports were surveyed. It was found that 62% of athletes used nonprescription medications for sports-related pain, which was significantly lower than previous findings for Division I-A football athletes: 12% reported taking more than the recommended dose; 1.5% reported taking nonprescription pain medication for > 10 consecutive days; and 38% reported that they read the label the first time they took a new nonprescription pain medication. These results, when compared with findings on Division I-A football athletes, demonstrated that Division II and III athletes are less likely to take more than the recommended dose of nonprescription pain medications and are less likely to use the medications for > 10 consecutive days-characteristics that are used to define misuse. Similar results were found when comparing Division I-A football athletes with non-Division I-A football athletes.Conclusions:Athletes from NCAA Division II and Division III sports appear to use nonprescription pain medication for sports-related pain less often and have lower rates of misuse than do Division I-A football athletes. Division I-A football athletes may be more likely to misuse nonprescription pain medication than non-Division I-A athletes. Special attention should be paid to this population to help reduce adverse event risks.
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science
2
6%
Nursing and Health Professions
2
6%
Psychology
1
3%
Other
1
3%
Unknown
10
30%
Attention Score in Context
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 June 2014.
All research outputs
#4,948,669
of 34,559,526 outputs
Outputs from Physician & Sportsmedicine
#234
of 1,162 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#50,516
of 304,428 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Physician & Sportsmedicine
#47
of 200 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,559,526 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 85th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,162 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.8. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 304,428 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 200 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
