Reporting Characteristics in Sports Nutrition

Purpose: To examine data reporting characteristics in sports nutrition. Methods: We examined 236 papers from ten journals published in 2016. The primary outcome was statistical variance associated with treatment (SD (correct) vs. SEM or CI). Secondary outcomes included the reporting of: (a) effect sizes (Y/N); (b) outcome prioritization (Y/N; primary, secondary, etc.) and (c) statistical variance relative to change from baseline (CI (correct) vs. SD or SEM). As tertiary/exploratory outcome, we examined whether authors stated a directed hypothesis. Statistical evaluation was performed using chi-square analyses. Results: We observed significant trends for all analyses (p < 0.001) and between category comparisons (p < 0.002). For the primary outcome, 128 (59%) articles correctly used SD to denote treatment variance, while 79 (36%) and 11 (5%) used SEM and CI, respectively. For secondary outcomes, 63 articles (29%) reported effect sizes, while 155 (71%) did not. Additionally, 188 articles (86%) did not prioritize outcomes, 134 articles (61%) stated no hypotheses and 40 (19%, out of 100) articles used CI to denote change scores vs. SD (19%, n = 41) and SEM (n = 10, 5%). Eight articles (4%) reported no variance terms. Conclusions: Overall, there are gaps regarding reporting in sports nutrition. Editors, journal publishers, and the field of exercise science alike should consider these outcomes and provide editorial staff, reviewers and authors with more concrete guidelines.