The specific purpose of this study was to develop, implement and validate a new system for athletic injury reporting;​ the Canadian Intercollegiate Sport Injury Registry (CISIR). The objective of the CISIR itself was to report rates and risks of injury. This capability has implications for future research in sport injury prediction and prevention.

The design followed an iterative process where an initial set of forms were developed, reviewed and revised based on feedback from practitioners in the Field. Three principle data collection instruments were employed;​ the Medical Form for preseason assessment of the athletes, the Weekly Exposure Sheet (WES) for documentation of daily individual athlete participation, and the Individual Injury Report Form (IIRF) for collection of injury related information.

Once development of a relational database (including a dual-entry program) were completed, the system was implemented in the 1993 Canada West University Athletic Association (CWUAA) football season. Throughout the season, an assessment of the validity of the system was made. Over the five universities, 99.7% of the athletes consented to participate and the degree of form submission was 100% for the WES (on which the data was 99.7% complete) and 99.4% for ihe IIRF (on which the data was over 80% complete for all but four items). The observed agreement between therapists and physician diagnosis was over 70%.

Analysis of the data demonstrated that the CISIR was able to meet its stated objectives of reporting rates and risks of injury. The ability to refine the definition injury during data analysis (i.e. based on actual time lost from participation) is unique to the CISIR. Relative risk estimates with a lower confidence limit greater than unity were observed for game versus practice activity, artificial turf versus grass surface, and subsequent versus first year of play, in addition to a past history of ankle, knee and brachial plexus injury.

Based on the outcome of the results, specific revisions to the system were suggested. In addition, future research directions were outlined, including further validation, expansion into other sports and predictive modeling for the multivariate exploration of risk factors.