10 research outputs found
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No Game for Boys to Play Debating the Safety of Youth Football, 1945-2015
Tackle football has been one of the most popular sports for boys in the United States since the mid-twentieth century. This dissertation examines how debates over the safety of football for children at the high school level and younger have changed from 1945 through the present. After World War II, the expansion of youth tackle football leagues, particularly for pre-pubescent children, fostered a new range of medical and educational concerns. Yet calls for limits on tackle football were largely obscured by the political and social culture of the Cold War, including beliefs about violence, masculinity, and competition.
A broad range of groups and individuals were involved in debating the safety of youth football throughout the remainder of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. These groups included doctors, coaches, educators, lawyers, engineers, parents, athletes, journalists, and sporting goods manufacturers. Their arguments over the risks and benefits of youth football involved not only the sport’s effects on physical health, but also on social and emotional well-being. By the 1970s, researchers were applying injury epidemiology methods to studying key mechanisms involved in football injuries, while a broader consumer product safety movement contributed to the development of the first football helmet standards. Football equipment not only remained a primary focus of football safety debates, but often symbolized safety itself. Sporting goods manufacturers largely succeeded in framing the issue of football safety as a matter of individual responsibility.
The social position of children and their communities shaped debates over the risks and benefits of football, including the sport’s spectator nature. By the early twentieth-first century, concerns about football-related brain injuries at all levels of the sport emerged as a topic of national debate. New medical findings and the reporting and advocacy of journalists and former athletes contributed to increasing awareness of brain trauma in the sport. Debates over the appropriate policy recommendations to make in the context of uncertainty over youth football’s long-term consequences have persisted since 1945 through the present
Narrative text analysis to identify technologies to prevent motor vehicle crashes: Examples from military vehicles
Introduction: The purpose of this research is to describe the leading circumstances of military vehicle crashes to guide prioritization and implementation of crash avoidance and/or warning technologies. Methods: A descriptive study using narrative text analysis on 3,944 military vehicle crash narratives. Crash data on drivers, from 2001 to 2006, were assembled from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center. Reviewers collected information on the circumstances of crashes and determined if vehicle technology could have prevented the crash. Results: Nearly 98% of the crashes were nonfatal; 63% occurred in the U.S. and 24% in Iraq. Among crash events where the direction of the impact was recorded, 32% were to the front of the vehicle and 16% involved a vehicle being rear-ended. Rollovers were mentioned in 20% of the narratives. Technology was determined to have the potential to prevent 26% of the crashes, with the forward collision warning system, rear end collision avoidance, emergency brake assistance, and rollover stability control system likely to have the greatest impacts. Conclusions: Some technologies available for civilian vehicles may prevent certain military crash circumstances. Impact on Industry: The results of this research are significant in light of ongoing global military operations that rely on military vehicles. Improving the preventive technology featured onmilitary vehiclesmay be an effective strategy to reduce the occurrence of military crashes
Editorial: Concussion and sport: a sociocultural perspective
Editorial on the research topic concussion and sport: a sociocultural perspective.</div