Page 6 Ashley, Jacques, Smith • A Nutrition Survey sport(s) played, previous or current nutrition education, access to sport nutritionist/dietitian, and main source of nutrition information. We chose the 49-SNKI, as opposed to other questionnaires, because it is one of the newer questionnaires that has specific focuses on both athletic and adult populations. This survey has also undergone an extensive development and validation process. Other advantages of the 49-SNKI are clear, distinct transitions from section to section, standard, close-ended answer options throughout the entirety of the questionnaire, and appropriate length. Because of these characteristics, the relevance of this questionnaire for our research study is higher than others. We administered our survey in an electronic format that came to the athletes via email. We asked head athletic trainers to share our questionnaire with their athletes. By asking these individuals to send out our questionnaire on our behalf we hoped that athletes would be more prone to complete the questionnaire as opposed to if our research team were to contact athletes directly. In hopes to increase participation and sample size, any participants had a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card. If participants wanted to be included in the chance of winning the gift card, they could enter their email address after finishing the survey. There was a statement preceding the answer box saying that their email address would not be used for any means/purposes other than contacting a single participant to say that they won the gift card. The research team made it clear in the initial informed consent section that participation in the research study was completely optional and that any participation was a voluntary act of the participant. The research team sent the questionnaire to the head athletic trainers of 9 different institutions in Ohio from the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. Of these nine schools, two participated in the questionnaire. The survey was available to participants for 2.5 weeks in the middle of September 2020. Before accessing the questionnaire, participants were required to read and respond to a statement of informed consent. Upon completion of the survey, the results for each individual were automatically sent to the researchers’ database where they were stored for review, analysis and compilation of the data. In total, the research team received data from 150 participants from two different Ohio GMAC institutions. The 49-SNKI offers three answers for each true or false question: “True,” “False,” or “Don’t Know.” Any question answered with the “Don’t Know” option gets a score of 0 for the question. Correct responses are scored as a 1, and incorrect responses (not “Don’t Know” answers) are scored as a -1. The questions the research team added to the questionnaire for population specification were not included in the score. The mean of the scores was 16.4 points, with a range of 52 points (min: -7; max: 45). For the following distinctions, the total number of participants will not always equal 150, because some participants chose to not answer specific questions. Of the participants that chose to include their gender, 47 were male, and 77 were female. As for the year in school, 46 were freshmen, 36 were sophomores, 29 were Juniors, 33 were seniors, and 6 were graduate students. The respondents participated in many different sports. The research team chose to split these sports into three different categories: team-contact, team-noncontact, and
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