Revealing gender differences in concussion reporting: a detailed analysis of SCAT assessment self-report symptom ratings.

Introduction: Current concussion assessments used by the NCAA are generally applied to both male and female athletes to evaluate the effects of sports-related head impacts. However, increasing evidence indicates that female athletes show different physiological and psychosocial responses to concussions compared to their male counterparts, raising concerns about the suitability of gender blind concussion assessments. Methods: This study analyzes data from Results: Based on EGA and PCA, the SCAT3 showed a four-factor substructure, with EFA accounting for 62.44% of the variance. LDA comparing males and females revealed a significant difference in their multivariate score distributions ( Discussion: Differences in symptom presentation post-concussion may suggest that: (1) males tend to be more conservative in reporting and only endorse symptoms when they are more intense, leading to higher scores on fewer symptoms, whereas (2) females may more readily emphasize emotional and physical symptoms. The findings imply that considering gender differences in concussion symptom reporting is important when making clinical recommendations.