Coming to a head: parental decision-making for contact and collision sports
Saturday, October 14, 2023
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM ET
Location: Heron (Fourth Floor)
Background: Children’s participation in contact sports presents parents with a nexus of medical and non-medical decisions. We investigated parents’ prioritization of beneficence, non-maleficence and child autonomy when making sports decisions and their reflections on similarities between sports decisions and other decision-making contexts.
Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with parents of school-aged children to elucidate how parents made decisions about their children’s contact sports participation. We included a subgroup of parents who were the adult children of deceased brain donors who were at risk and evaluated for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Interviews were analyzed following grounded theory methodology.
Results: 12 participants were interviewed (30 anticipated). Parents viewed sports decisions as multifaceted - as one parent said, “It is a social decision, it is an extracurricular decision, and it is a health decision.” Children’s preferences often played a large part in sports decisions because of the importance of their interest in and enjoyment of the sport. Parents calibrated their decision-making with financial and logistical considerations. As risks increased with the level of play, parents often continued to support their children’s interests. However, most parents imagined there would be a threshold of safety risk at which they would overrule their children’s wishes.
Conclusion: Preliminary results suggest that children’s broad scope of decision-making in sports contexts is important to attaining the benefits of sport. When children’s interests or identities lie in sports with increasing risk, parents struggle with when to overrule their choice and require a high threshold of risk to do so.
Madeline Uretsky, MS – Research Program Manager, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Bobak Abdolmohammadi, BA – Research Data Analyst III, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Evan Nair, BS – Research Specialist, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Michael Alosco, PhD – Director, Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Clinical Core; Co-Director, Clinical Research, BU CTE Center; Associate Professor of Neurology, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Kristen Dams-O'Connor, PhD – Director of the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai, Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, Professor of Neurology, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Ann McKee, MD – Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pathology, Director of the BU Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Jesse Mez, MD, MS – Associate Professor of Neurology, Associate Director BU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and CTE Centers, Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Christine Baugh, PhD, MPH – Assistant Professor, Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Anschutz