‘Uncomfortable and Embarrassed’: The Stigma of Gastrointestinal Symptoms as a Barrier to Accessing Care and Support for Collegiate Athletes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study aimed to explore the occurrence of exercise-associated gastrointestinal symptoms (ExGIS) in collegiate athletes and identify related self-management practices. A sequential mixed methods design was used, consisting of an online survey followed by semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics (survey) and thematic analysis (interviews). Survey respondents (n = 96) represented various individual and team sports but were primarily female (76%). ExGIS prevented or interrupted training and/or competition in 32%. Female athletes experienced gastrointestinal symptoms (GIS) more frequently at rest (60%) and during training (37%), compared to males (22% and 9%, respectively; p < 0.01). Only 12% sought health care for ExGIS. Four (13%) female runners with ExGIS agreed to an interview. Response rates and interview data provided evidence of stigma in discussing GIS. Self-imposed food restriction was a common self-management strategy. In summary, female collegiate athletes may experience a greater burden of GIS and ExGIS than males. The stigmatized topic of ExGIS is a potential barrier to seeking health care and support. Access to a sport dietitian could help to address barriers to ExGIS care and support self-management practices in these athletes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".