Task 1

A sports nutritionist is interested in whether a new nutritional supplement has a beneficial or harmful effect on elite cyclists' 40 km time trail performance (the faster the time, the better the performance). The nutritionist conducts an experiment to examine the effect of two different doses of the supplement; a high dose and a low dose. The experimental design is a post-only crossover design whereby all of the cyclists perform the time trial under three different conditions, 1) placebo, 2) low dose, and 3) high dose in a counterbalanced manner. There was sufficient rest in between each of the time trials.

a) Select and justify the appropriate statistical technique to answer the research question

b) Describe your analysis as per the statistical analysis section of a journal's methodology

c) Perform your analysis and then write-up in the style of a journal's results section

d) Comment upon your results

Task 2

A strength and conditioning coach is interested in the effect of a 6-week high-intensity aerobic training program on VO₂max in elite hockey players. The coach feels that a pre-post parallel group design is the best design to answer the research question. Therefore, 20 participants are recruited and they all visit the laboratory for a VO₂max test. Once all the participants have been tested the coach creates the two groups (intervention &control) and the participants are allocated to each group in a counterbalanced manner. The intervention group performs the high-intensity training program, which consists of 2 training sessions per week on top of their usual training. The control group continue with their regular training program and do not perform any extra training.

ANSWER:

a) Select and justify the appropriate statistical technique to answer the research question

b) Describe your analysis as per the statistical analysis section of a journal's methodology

c) Perform your analysis and then write-up in the style of a journal's results section

d) Comment upon your results

TASK 3

A Sports Therapist believes that manual therapy is a more effective mode of rehabilitating a hamstring injury when compared to traditional ultrasound treatment. As a first step toward investigating this theory the therapist compares the two different modes of rehabilitation in a random sample of athletes who have re-injured their hamstrings and a random sample of athletes who have not re-injured their hamstrings. Do these data warrant asserting that ultrasound treatment is found more frequently among athletes who have re-injured than among athletes who have not re-injured their hamstrings?

 ANSWER:

a) Select and justify the appropriate statistical technique to answer the research question

a) Describe your analysis as per the statistical analysis section of a journal's methodology

b) Perform your analysis and then write-up in the style of a journal's results section

c) Comment upon your results

 TASK 4

A sports scientist has developed a new warm-up protocol. They are interested in how this new warm-up protocolaffects repeated-sprint performance when compared to the old warm-up protocol. Repeated-sprint performance was assessed by 6 maximal 40 m sprints with 30 seconds recovery in between each sprint. The sport scientist used a cross-over design, whereby the athletes performed both protocols on different days with sufficient rest in between and the order of tests was counterbalanced. The sport scientists' research question is 'how do the two different warm-up protocols influence the rate of change in sprint time across the repeated-sprint test'.

ANSWER:

a) Select and justify the appropriate statistical technique to answer the research question

b) Describe your analysis as per the statistical analysis section of a journal's methodology

c) Perform your analysis and then write-up in the style of a journal's results section

d) Comment upon your results