| Summary: | Injury surveillance is essential for reducing injury incidence in sport, and methods for surveillance have been the focus of a growing number of researchers in the last 15 years. However, work is still required to evaluate the impact of social phenomena on injury surveillance data. This thesis represents one of the first studies of its kind to incorporate both injury surveillance data and investigate psychological and sociocultural phenomena. It explores the impact of these factors on the reporting of injury in professional sport. The first study reported in this thesis compares versions 8 and 10 of the Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (OSICS) for completeness and accuracy, using data from a surveillance study in professional football, cricket and rugby union. It is the first study to evaluate inter-rater reliability of OSICS-10. All injury diagnoses could be assigned an appropriate code with OSICS-10, compared to 87% of diagnoses that could be assigned an OSICS-8 code. Contusions comprised almost half of diagnoses that could not be assigned an accurate OSICS-8 code. Interrater reliability of OSICS-10 was shown to be moderate (k=0.56). The findings of the study suggest that OSICS-10 is a better system to use than OSICS-8 when classifying injury diagnoses from injury surveillance studies, and a key recommendation from this study has been incorporated into the development of an interim system, OSICS-9, which has since been published. The second study examines weaknesses of an injury surveillance system implemented in professional football, cricket and rugby union by recording issues that arose with implementing the surveillance model, with particular emphasis on instances where psychological or sociocultural issues prevented the accurate recording of injury data. Seven keys groupings emerged of reasons for issues that adversely affected the reporting of injury through traditional surveillance methods. These were: 'High importance games', 'Approaching contract signing time', 'Carrying injuries through the season', 'Awaiting insurance payout and retirement', 'Overuse injuries', 'Friendly games' and 'Availability of other players'. There were several impacts of these issues that included under- and over-reporting of injury, and impacts on the reporting of injury severity. The findings of this I -I study suggest that psychological and sociocultural phenomena affect the findings of injury surveillance, and that further work in this area is warranted.
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