Table 2.
Study inclusion–exclusion criteria
| Inclusion criteria | Exclusion criteria | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Original research articles | Reviews, magazines, surveys, opinion pieces, books, periodicals, editorials, conference abstracts, non-academic/non-peer-reviewed text |
| 2 | Field-based team sports or court-based invasion games | Striking and fielding games (cricket, baseball), net and wall games (badminton, tennis, volleyball) and ice-, sand- or water-based team sports |
| 3 | Competitive able-bodied elite athletesa | Athletes with physical or mental disability, athletes competing outside of the top 3 tiers in their sport, match officials |
| 4 | Participants with mean age ≥ 18 years | Participants with mean age < 18 years |
| 5 | Competitive match play rules (i.e. full-sized court/pitch, regulation number of players) | Training and small-sided games, non-competitive matches (friendlies), match simulations |
| 6 | GPS systems (with sampling frequency ≥ 5 Hz) | GPS units (with sampling frequency of < 5 Hz), any non-GPS system (e.g. digital video-based tracking) |
| 7 | Reported both higher (> 2.5 m·s−2) intensity acceleration and deceleration events separately and concurrently | Reported just acceleration or deceleration events in isolation, combined acceleration and deceleration variables into one metric (e.g. average acceleration, velocity change load, acceleration load, high-intensity efforts, explosive distance), no high-intensity thresholds reported, did not report acceleration or deceleration events (i.e. focus was on other locomotor related variables, e.g. sprinting, high-intensity running, metabolic power) |
| 8 | Reported data for full match durationb | Reported only part of a match (i.e. first half, extra-time) |
| 9 | Full text available in English | Cannot access full text in English |
| 10 | Data set used in one studyc | Studies using the same data set from an earlier publication (salami slicing) |
GPS global positioning system
aElite athletes classified using a modified version of Swann et al. [33] (see Table S3 of the Electronic Supplementary Material)
bMatch duration greater than 75%
cStudy with earliest publication date used when multiple studies published using same data set