Question: 

Recently attention has been drawn towards gender bias negatively influencing the quality of scientific results. However, no guidelines exist for a fair, gender-adjusted research. The present study investigated gender bias in sport medical physiological studies of German research institutions.

Methodology: 

All abstracts of sport medical publications were analysed which were attributed to German research facilities and appeared during the years 2005–2008 in the data bases ,Spolit' or ,Pubmed' (key words: "sport# med", "sportmed?", "athlet? Med?", "mediz?", "medic?", "sport#", "athletic" for the Pubmed data base and "*sportmed*" for the Spolit data base). 2922 abstracts were finally identified and were further analysed by a standardised content analysis which took into account quantitative and qualitative aspects of gender bias.

Results: 

The topics of most (96.8%) abstracts analysed were relevant for men and women. Female gender was less represented in the groups investigated. Only 7.2% of all analysed abstracts provided evidence for a gender-sensible research by giving information on existing differences or similarities between men and women. When further analysing those abstracts which were relevant for both sexes and in which both sexes were also integrated into the study design, only a few abstracts also performed a gender-sensible differentiation with cardiovascular abstracts being more represented (20%) than neurophysiological topics (2.9%).

Conclusion: 

Primary results based on abstract content analyses provide evidence for gender bias affecting most research issues in sport medical physiological research. Cardiovascular research topics provide a gender sensibility than neurophysiological research. This problem should be addressed in the specialised scientific communities.