Period pain and archery scores: Nurdin 2021 study

Twenty female archers from a university club in Jakarta shot 36 arrows under normal conditions and 36 on a day of dysmenorrhoea, that is, with period pain. The mean score was 283.5 without pain and 272.1 with it, 11.4 points lower; the medians were 286.5 and 275. With pain the scores were more spread out: the minimum fell from 213 to 176 and the variance rose from 1,403.56 to 2,150.411, while the maximum stayed similar (335 and 330). The statistical test gave t = 0.874, below the critical value of 2.025, and the authors conclude that dysmenorrhoea did not change the score significantly.

The study was carried out on the Universitas Negeri Jakarta range in August and September 2021. From a club of 50 female archers, or 56 according to another part of the text, 20 were chosen by quota: young women who had started menstruating and had been shooting for at least six months. Each shot two rounds of 36 arrows, one on a normal day and one on a day of dysmenorrhoea, and the total scores were compared with a t-test. The listed instruments are the range, bow, arrows, score sheet and a stopwatch. In its introduction the paper describes competition shooting in general, 36 arrows at 70 metres on the 122-centimetre face, but it does not say whether the test was shot that way, with what bow, or in what order the two rounds were shot.

The condition under study is never defined: we are not told how dysmenorrhoea was identified, how severe the pain was, whether the athletes took painkillers or where in the cycle the "normal" round fell. Each condition rests on a single round of 36 arrows, too little to detect a difference of about ten points with this much variability. The comparison is within the same athletes, but the critical value of 2.025 corresponds to a test for independent groups, which loses sensitivity with paired data. Under these conditions a non-significant difference does not show that dysmenorrhoea makes no difference; it shows that the study could not detect an effect. The abstract also promises an analysis of the causes of dysmenorrhoea and of its prevention and treatment, which the paper does not contain.

For an archer who shoots with period pain the study does not give a solid answer. On average the twenty athletes scored about 11 points fewer out of 360 when in pain, but the design does not allow anyone to say whether the gap reflects an effect or chance. For a coach there remains a piece of context: on painful days scores were more spread out and the lowest fell from 213 to 176. Without the individual athletes' data, though, there is no way to know whether some were badly affected and others not at all.