A - 13 “Am I going to be like this forever?”: Athletes’ Experiences of Sport-Related Concussion Symptoms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objective Previous research has focused on understanding the symptoms and long-term effects of sport-related concussion (SRC) through quantitative methods. Less is known about the impacts of SRC from the athletes’ perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of SRC symptoms among Canadian varsity athletes. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom teleconferencing. Participants were 11 Canadian university varsity soccer and rugby athletes (M = 20.66 years, SD = 1.43 years; 45% female). All participants had experienced an SRC within the last 26 months. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns across athletes’ experiences of SRC symptoms. Results Four unique themes emerged: (1) immediate disorientation, (2) prolonged emotional difficulties, (3) prolonged memory impairments and (4) executive dysfunction. Disorientation was the first SRC symptom experienced by 90% of athletes. Emotional disturbances were experienced throughout recovery with deficits in emotional regulation being the most salient for athletes. Difficulties with short-term and long-term memory were experienced by athletes up to 26 months post-SRC onset. Executive dysfunction manifested primarily as difficulties with planning and decision making. Lastly, long-term difficulties with speech articulation (e.g., stuttering and word-finding) were described as a unique symptom for a small subgroup (36%) of athletes. Conclusions Consistent with the literature, concussed athletes frequently described concerns about long-lasting symptoms and post-concussive difficulties with emotion, memory and executive function. Additional findings captured some nuance from the lived experience of post-concussion symptoms and their effect on athletes’ overall psychosocial functioning.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".