Labeling Avoidance in Healthcare Decision-Making: How Stakeholders Make Sense of Concussion Events through Sport...

Area of Science:

• Sports Medicine
• Sociology of Sport
• Psychology of Sport

Background:

• Concussion events in sports pose significant risks to athlete well-being.
• Understanding athlete sensemaking processes is crucial for effective concussion management.
• Cultural narratives within sports can influence perceptions and behaviors surrounding injuries.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how cultural sport narratives impact athletic team members' sensemaking during concussion events.
• To identify the specific cultural narratives utilized by athletes and athletic trainers when interpreting concussions.
• To explore the functions of these narratives in athlete decision-making and identity defense.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of macro-level sport culture narratives.
• Conducting interviews with 93 collegiate athletes and athletic trainers from eleven large U.S. universities.
• Qualitative analysis of interview data to identify emergent themes and narratives.

Main Results:

• Participants employed five key cultural sport narratives: Play-through-pain, Commodification, Big leagues, Masculine-Warrior, and Need-for-safety.
• These narratives served as extracted cues and identity defenses in sensemaking.
• The concept of labeling avoidance was identified, explaining athletes' rationalization for not disclosing severe head impacts.

Conclusions:

• Cultural sport narratives significantly influence how athletes perceive and respond to concussions.
• Athletes may avoid formal concussion diagnoses due to narrative pressures, impacting disclosure.
• Findings have implications for developing targeted interventions to improve concussion reporting and care in sports.