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Abstract
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Concussion has been deemed an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control with potential costly medical care and long-term consequences. Due to potential risks associated with not reporting a concussion, legislation involving adolescents and concussion has been passed in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.1 Education has been called the "cornerstone of concussion prevention," and thus, a key component of state legislation was requiring student-athletes to be educated on concussions.
Concussion education has focused on increasing knowledge of common mechanisms, signs and symptoms, management, and so on. The literature has consistently found an increase in concussion knowledge following an educational intervention; however, incidence rates have not changed with 1.6 to 3.8 million sports-related concussions occurring annually.2 Unfortunately, concussions are severely underreported, with only 47.3% of high school athletes reporting their concussion.3 McCrea et al3 identified several reasons why athletes did not report a potential concussion as follows: the athletes did not think it was serious, did not understand the severity, did not want to let teammates down, and finally, they did not want to leave the game.
The belief was that athletes who were better educated on the signs and symptoms and potential dangers of concussion would be more likely to report.1 However, literature has shown inconsistent evidence on the efficacy of concussion education improving reporting behaviors.2 It appears that educating athletes may decrease their willingness to report a concussion.2 Further, recent research has taken into account other personal and socially motivated reasons, beyond concussion knowledge, why athletes may not report.4-6 Overall, there is evidence that concussion knowledge may not be as good a predictor of intention to report concussions.7,8
Recent evidence has suggested that increasing concussion knowledge alone does not increase an athlete's intention to report. Several theories have been suggested to examine strategies to increase reporting behavior. One theory is the theory of planned behavior that postulates a person's intention will be a good predictor of their actual behavior.
Language: en |