The study conducted by Kelly Sarmiento, Jane Mitchko, Cynthia Klein, and Sharon Wong on the evaluation of the Center for Disease and Prevention’s concussion initiative for high school coaches based on a tool kit. The researchers hypothesized that prolonged problems related to concussions might influence the perceptions, remembrance, understanding, verbal communication and sentiments. The study set a purpose to assess concussion among athletes in high schools. The objectives were to find out barriers of adopting a tool kit, how it was used, knowledge and attitude of the coaches on concussion after being issued with the kit, its impact on coaches’ work, and how it enabled coaches to manage concussion.
The study used US-based coaches (n=1009) who trained high school athletes as the respondents. Mail surveys were used to obtain information on how the coaches used the toolkits. Qualitative information was obtained from the written answers on questions asked in the mail survey. The surveyors applied these mail-based assessments to target the coaches through Likert-scale, open-ended, and closed questions. The collected data was analyzed on the basis of its nature. For quantitative data, Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was adopted for the descriptive statistics and segmentations. The researching team assessed the findings from the target groups to attain a clear data analysis.
The results of the research were acquired from 333 qualified coaches who took part fully in the study and responded appropriately to the questions. The preponderance of the coaches trained high-school students in rural areas, and the athletes’ parents were moderate-income earners. Most respondents (79%) admitted that the tool kit provided far-reaching information than their existing guidelines. The barriers to coaches’ response on the established concussion included the parents’ and athletes’ understanding of concussion as a weakness, limited insurance, and underrating of concussion threats. The booklet whose preference stood at 79% was used commonly.
Most participants preferred to use the booklet (79%), wallet card (73%), parents’ fact sheet (73%), and the athlete’s fact sheet (75%) in their future practices. On the knowledge imparted to the coaches, 34% were reported to have learnt at least a new thing from the kit, with the high implementers at 43% and low implementers at 22% of this tally. The mind-sets of the coaches have not been deviated a lot since only 50% of the respondents reported a serious change of their concussion attitude. The tool kit enabled 68% of the participants to enlighten other people in regard to the concussion. Others reported that the tool kit enhanced easy initiation of the discussion on concussion. On skill-building, 38% of the respondents were reported to adopt the kit for preventing and managing concussion.
The study concluded that the tool kit has received positive response among the coaches and impacted positively on the work of coaches. However, adequate work must be done to realize improved health and safety of the athletes.
Moreover, it is apparent that the report from this team is subject to critique for adopting open-ended questions bound to limit the respondents to the questions asked. Otherwise, the respondents would provide more information if the data could be collected based on the respondents’ feelings. The majority of respondents were drawn from rural setups. This made the research biased since the use of the toolkit in urban areas would have given a contrary conclusion from that which the researchers made. Furthermore, a reliable methodology would have been adopted for better and more accurate results than in this research.
The study addressed comprehensive assessments of the toolkit impacts. It is sufficiently relevant to the sport coaching practices especially for open and clear minds of the training individuals, which is pertinent to my research topic. Furthermore, the research can be used to raise questions that are essential in facilitating improvement for my future research topic.
Reference
Sarmiento, K., Mitcko, J., Klein, C., & Wong, S. (2010). Evaluation of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Concussion initiative for High School Coaches: ‘‘Heads Up: Concussion in High School Sports’’. Journal of School Health, 80(3), 112-118.