Examination of nutritional knowledge levels of physical education and sports stakeholders in gender variable: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and Study Aim. Nutrition knowledge is related to dietary behavior in athletes. Therefore, it may also have an impact on performance. Athletes with better nutrition knowledge have more healthy dietary habits. This meta-analysis study focused on the impact of gender on the nutrition knowledge levels of physical education and sports stakeholders. Material and Methods. This study adopted a meta-analysis research design, which is used to analyze, synthesize, and interpret quantitative findings from an array of studies through advanced statistical techniques. A meta-analysis involves combining the findings of studies carried out in different places and at different times on the same topic and obtaining a quantitatively accurate result based on a large sample. This study employed the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA, v. 2.0) to determine effect sizes and the variance of each study and to compare groups. Cohen’s kappa intercoder reliability and outlier tests were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results. We focused on 31 studies with a total sample size of 4575. We calculated the effect size of each study. We found a statistically significant effect size in favor of female stakeholders (d = 0.15; 95% CI -0.22 -0.09) in the fixed effects model, which was a weak result according to Cohen’s classification. We determined a statistically significant effect size in favor of female stakeholders (d = 0.15; 95% CI -0.29-0.01) in the random-effects model. These results suggest a slight difference in nutrition knowledge levels between male and female physical education and sports stakeholders. This result can pave the way for further research. Conclusions. It is understood from the physical education and sports stakeholders that there is a weak difference in the nutritional knowledge levels of women compared to men. It is thought that people who study on sports nutrition and nutrition programs will benefit from the present finding. In addition, it is estimated that the researches to be carried out on the relevant subject will take the current study as a reference.