Citation

Schor SS. Am. J. Public Health 1984; 74(10): 1169-1171.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.74.10.1169-b

PMID

6476179

PMCID

PMC1651872

Abstract

I would like to congratulate Dr. Gerberich, et al, on researching a very important topic "Concussion Incidences and Severity in Secondary School Varsity Football Players" in the Journal, Volume 73, #12. Certainly ways must be found to cut down on the number of injuries, not only in high school football, but football in general. However, I am somewhat concerned about the analysis of the data. I would think that any type of study dealing with accidents or injuries should relate those accidents or injuries to exposure time. The unit used by the authors was injuries per 100 players and I doubt very much whether the denominator of players is really a good indication of exposure time to the numerator. This has a special relevance to comparisons that are made between subgroups, e.g., comparing linebackers with linemen, or running backs, quarterbacks and wide receivers on page 1373. There are only a finite number of person-minutes of exposure during the season and if these are split among more people, the denominator increases and the ratio becomes artificially decreased. Just what was the definition of a player? Is a person who is on the varsity team but hardly ever and sometimes never plays in a game considered a player? Or is a player a person who has to play at least half of every game? If the four linebackers played every minute...

Keywords: American football;