Term of Award

Fall 2013

Degree Name

Master of Science in Kinesiology (M.S.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (open access)

Department

Department of Health and Kinesiology

Committee Chair

Thomas Buckely

Committee Member 1

Jody Langdon

Committee Member 2

Trey Burdette

Abstract

Context: Coaches who don’t have access to qualified health care providers need to be well educated on prevention, detection, assessment, and management of sport-related concussion to help decrease the risks associated. Due to the lack of assessment on educational interventions there is no way to determine the validity of the content. Objective: Determine which of three online concussion education interventions was most influential on coaches’ concussion knowledge, retention of knowledge, and their effects on attitudes amongst a sample of coaching education students. Participants: 233 coaching student’s recruited, used 154 for data analysis (71% male, x̅ age = 21.2 ± 1.68 years, 1.18 ± 0.37 years of coaching experience). Interventions: An original questionnaire was administered in a streamline series using Qualtrics: pre-intervention, immediately post intervention, and a follow-up 30 days later. The assessment’s context was created using current concussion questions in the literature that were emphasized in the education interventions: Brain 101: The concussion Playbook (B101), Concussion Wise (CW), and Head-Up: Concussion in Youth Sports (CDC). Results: CW was the most effective intervention at improving overall concussion symptoms (F = 26.79, p < .001), actual concussion symptoms (F = 12.0, p < .001) and overall concussion knowledge (F = 50.71, p = .04, p = .001). Discussion: Overall all three of the interventions improved the participant’s concussion knowledge; however CW was the most influential. From our results we can suggest that there are effective and influential concussion education interventions currently created that can have a positive impact on coaches’ concussion knowledge.

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