Considering the magnitude and burden of athletic injuries (track and field) across all levels of participation, it appears logical that injury prevention measures should be implemented. However, it is unclear whether injury prevention is perceived as a necessity by stakeholders in athletics (i.e. athletes, coaches and health professionals). Do these stakeholders perceive injury prevention as relevant? The answer to this query sparked our interest. That is why, in a collaboration with the University Hospital of St Etienne, we explored how stakeholders in athletics perceived the relevance of injury prevention, determined their communication preferences, and described their expectations regarding injury prevention.
Methods
We conducted a cross-sectional study using an exploratory online survey with athletes (elite and non-elite), coaches, and health professionals licensed with the French Federation of Athletics (FFA). The survey was a mix of closed and open-ended questions. We asked respondents about their perceptions of injury prevention relevance and their communication preferences and expectations of injury prevention information.
The open-ended questions were analysed using principles of Grounded Theory to gather, analyse and synthesise data to generate main concepts to develop an overview of the stakeholders’ expectations.
Results
There were 2,864 responders to the survey. Almost all responders found that injury prevention is relevant (97.7% [95% CI 97.0% to 98.2%]), without any significant differences in the distribution between stakeholders' age, experience and sex (p > 0.05). About three-quarters of the stakeholders preferred to find injury prevention information on a website (77.4%) without significant differences between stakeholders' categories (p > 0.05); other media to find injury prevention information was chosen by less than 50% of responders.
Expectations about injury prevention were mainly explanations, advice and tips about injury knowledge, management and prevention, based on expert opinion and/or scientific research.
Concept map regarding expectations towards injury prevention information from the athletics stakeholders’ categories (i.e. high-level athletes, non-high-level other athletes, coaches, and health professionals).
Conclusions
From our results, we concluded that most of the stakeholders agreed on the relevance of injury prevention in athletics. This represents a fertile ground for implementing injury preventive measures in athletics since the alignment of advice to the stakeholders’ perceptions and expectations is an important aspect of successfully implementing prevention measures. This survey provides preliminary findings (e.g., communication preferences and expected information) to move forward in injury prevention in athletics and should be continued through a better understanding of other aspects, such as barriers and facilitators of dissemination and implementation of injury prevention.
The full paper can be found here (paid access)
Edouard P, Ruffault A, Bolling C, Navarro L, Martin S, Depiesse F, Oestergaard Nielsen R, Verhagen E. French Athletics Stakeholders' Perceptions of Relevance and Expectations on Injury Prevention. Int J Sports Med. 2022 May 4. doi: 10.1055/a-1843-6533. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35508199.