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Keywords

Clinical Practice in Athletic Training

Abstract

Context: The purpose of this study was to determine how coaches view injury prevention programs (IPP) and how this affects their decision to implement an IPP with their team. The more information gained on a coach’s influence to implement an injury prevention program for their team, the more athletic trainers can understand and educate on the importance of injury prevention programs. Methods: Design: Cross-sectional Setting: Web-based survey Target Population: Youth Sport Coaches Dependent Variable: Coaches beliefs on IPPs Independent Variable: Willingness to implement an IPP. Youth sport coaches were surveyed on their attitudes and beliefs about injury prevention programs. All questions used a five-point Likert scale (5=Strongly Agree, 1=Strongly Disagree for questions on Willingness or 5=Very Important, 1= Not Important). Questions on willingness to implement an IPP were dichotomized (4-5=Yes, 1-3= No). As a response of “3” indicates “Neither Agree nor Disagree” responses of “3” were considered “No” since they could not be considered agreement. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS (Version 28; IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY) and the α level set a priori at P ≤ .05. A Pearson χ2 test of association was used to identify any significant (p<0.05) differences in coaches’ responses between sport (basketball and soccer). If no association was observed, chi-square tests were performed on the coaches as one group. Any categorical variables that displayed an expected count below five were omitted from this analysis. Ethics approval was obtained from University X’s IRB (IRB #X12-116). Results: 150 coaches (Sport: Basketball=76 Soccer =74, Sex: Female=34, Male=116 Age=42+11) completed the survey. Coaches who indicated they plan to implement an IPP next season reported finding it of higher importance to prevent sport-related injuries (χ2(2, N=138)=8.831, P=0.012), prevent ACL injuries (χ2(2, N=137)=13.826, P<.001) and say it was “very important” to use an injury prevention program to prevent injury (χ2(2, N=135)=32.505, P<.001) than coaches who said they do not plan to implement an IPP with their team in the upcoming season. Conclusions: Youth sports coaches who find it important to prevent sport-related injuries to the lower extremity and, more specifically, ACL injuries are more likely to use injury prevention programs. A vast majority of coaches do not utilize IPPs and find them of lesser importance. Education on the importance of these programs for coaches to help their teams reduce injury risk and rates at the youth sport level is warranted to help close this gap and increase coaches’ knowledge of injury prevention programs.

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