Methodological Considerations for Studies in Sport and Exercise Science with Women as Participants: A Working Guide for Standards of Practice for Research on Women
Key Findings — Key Contribution
Why the guide exists (abstract): most high-quality sport and exercise science data come from men; a shortage of specialist knowledge on female physiology and a reluctance to adapt designs to the menstrual cycle, hormonal contraceptive use, pregnancy and menopause have slowed the field; and there is no agreement on terminology or gold-standard techniques.
What it does: sets out participant-selection criteria and experimental-design adaptations for studies with women, covering the diversity of female reproductive endocrinology across the lifespan, to increase the inclusion of women and raise the quality of female-specific data.
The specific standards the guide recommends (full text, checked 2026-09-27): hormone verification of menstrual-cycle phase by serum oestradiol and progesterone rather than calendar counting alone; explicit classification of menstrual status (eumenorrheic, oligomenorrheic, amenorrheic, hormonal-contraceptive user by type) before enrolment; and confirmation of regular cycles over several consecutive cycles before testing.Exact cycle-length cut-offs and phase day-ranges are not reproduced here because they are not in the abstract.
Practical Application
This 2021 working guide is the reference standard for how female-athlete studies should be designed: define reproductive status, verify cycle phase with hormones, and adapt the design to contraceptive use, pregnancy and menopause. When reading a menstrual-cycle study, check whether phase was hormone-verified; if it was not, treat phase-specific conclusions with skepticism.
Not from this paper; the base's own practice: in coaching, a symptom diary plus performance log over several cycles is the practical proxy for hormone verification before acting on any "phase" pattern.
Not from this paper: if an athlete is amenorrheic or oligomenorrheic, screen for REDs (REF-341) before attributing performance changes to cycle phase.
Limitations
Guidance document, not primary evidence
Recommended standards are resource-intensive (serum sampling) and often not feasible in coaching contexts
Does not resolve the biological question; only standardizes how it should be asked
How this entry was checked and changed
Content correction 2026-09-27
Phase day-ranges ("EF days 1-5, LF 6-14, L 15-28"), cycle-length cut-offs ("21-35 d, >35 d, >90 d") and "minimum of 3 confirmed cycles before enrolment" -> not in the abstract; removed, with the recommendations kept qualitatively and labelled full text.
The quoted phrase "of low quality and high risk of misclassification" -> not in the abstract; quotation removed.
Sport "swimming" -> general. Coaching proxies relabelled as the base's own practice.
Lines labelled "full text; not checked" were read against the open-access full text (PMC8053180): 1 confirmed and relabelled.