With a growing body of research into volleyball injuries we are beginning to understand potential risk factors for the most prevalent injuries. Volleyball has been found to have more overuse than acute injuries, yet the majority of research to date has failed to utilize an injury definition sensitive enough to capture the true frequency and burden of overuse problems. Furthermore, the mechanism of overuse injuries is believed to be a chronic overloading of tissue, in combination with an incomplete healing process. With advancements in technology, it is now possible to accurately and efficiently measure these loads which, in turn, could have significant impact on injury prevention.

Previously identified risk factors were assessed with the purpose of developing a sport-specific screening program. The impact of injury definition on the data collection for overuse injuries was also examined. This analysis evaluation confirmed the need to use specific overuse injury definitions, with an improved sensitivity for the capture of overuse injury frequency and burden compared to more conventional time-loss definitions. An assessment of known risk factors, including a measure of jumping load, was completed with the more sensitive overuse injury capture. Although no risk factor was found to significantly predict injury outcome, several methodological challenges were identified.

This research demonstrates that traditional assessment techniques that have been used for time-loss injuries are not sufficient for overuse injury capture and analyses. The contribution of this dissertation to the literature is the demonstration that the methods presented can more accurately capture the injury burden and record the specific load metrics for that injury. However, further advancements in statistical analysis for prevalence measures of injury are required to assess dynamic risk factors, including measures of load, for overuse injuries.