Topic: Concussion rates in high school and college athletics
Statistical Concepts Covered: In this applet we will use comparison groups, discuss the importance of sample sizes, and the need for empirical data to check conventional wisdom.
Introduction:
Psychology, like all other scientific fields, relies on empirical evidence to draw conclusions about the world. The introductory story for this chapter makes clear the serious consequences of damage to the brain. This makes understanding how the brain works, the primary topic of this chapter, all the more important. Understanding when, where and why brain injury is most likely to occur helps coaches, athletes, and parents make better decisions about taking preventative actions.
Sometimes the data support commonly held folk beliefs, and sometimes the data reveal new or surprising relationships between the variables involved. The best way to see if your beliefs about how the world works are true is to collect data and see what story they tell. However, you must also be careful to make sure that your data collection techniques are as free from potential biases and confounding variables as you can.
This applet uses data that was collected by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council on the rates of sports-related concussions for men and women playing high school and college sports. While exploring this data, you should be thinking about how your intuitions may or may not line up with the actual empirical evidence and how data collection methods may influence the data and, as a result, the subsequent conclusions.
1) The data in this report are provided in terms of number of injuries per 10,000 events, where an event is a player attending a practice or a game. What is the most reasonable explanation for presenting the data this way instead of listing the raw number of brain injuries in each sport?
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2) If you performed a survey of college students about which sport presents the greatest risk of concussions for college athletes, they would likely select football. What is the approximate concussion rate for college football over the past 10 years?
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3) Now look at the college data from 2009 – 2013. Which of the following sports is actually the highest concussion risk?
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4) Of the four sports listed below, which one appears to have the greatest risk of concussions?
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5) Which of the following claims may have some support based on the data?
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6) If you isolate only the college sports that have both men’s and women’s teams (soccer, basketball, lacrosse, etc.), would you expect the men’s sports or the women’s sports to have higher concussion rates? Now look at the data from 2009 – 2013. Which statement best reflects the data?
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7) Suppose that you were asked to create a graph to advance the argument that college football is a relatively safe sport. Which two other college sports would you include on the graph to create the most compelling presentation?
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8) You want to create a graph that compares the concussion rate for high school men’s football vs. college men’s football. Which of the following hypotheses provides the best explanation for the data?
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9) The data indicates that there are high rates of concussions among high school soccer players and college soccer players. However, the college data was collected from an NCAA-wide concussion reporting initiative and the high school data comes from athletic trainers at a relatively small number of high schools around the country. How does this information affect your interpretation of the data?
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10) Look at the trend in concussion rates across all sports between the 2004 – 2009 reporting period and the 2009 – 2013 reporting period. Which line of reasoning is the best explanation for these data?
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