SIRC articles provide evidence-based and actionable insights from sport researchers, athletes, coaches, sport organizations and thought leaders to advance sport in Canada.
Concussions in Sport: What Parents Need to Know About the Youngest Athletes
Each year in Canada, more than 200,000 athletes experience a concussion. The numbers are striking, and so is the fact that until recently, the youngest athletes were almost absent from research and public conversation about these injuries. Dr. Miriam Beauchamp is a professor at the University of Montreal, a researcher at Sainte-Justine Hospital, and Canada…
Project Summary Researchers are beginning to pay greater attention to the connections and contradictions between sport, health and healthcare. Despite the conventional wisdom that greater participation in sport and physical activity enhances health and the quality of life, more and...
Project Summary Parents are key influencers of their children’s leisure behaviours. They identify and create opportunities for their child’s continued participation in leisure activities including sport. There are a number of factors that affect a parent’s ability to support his/her...
Project Summary This project was designed to examine the impact of coaching on athlete outcomes in youth sport. The research focused on both the perceptions and behaviors of the coach, and assessed sporting and non-sporting (i.e., positive youth development) outcomes...
Project Summary Previous research in the field of positive youth development has highlighted the importance of extracurricular activities, such as sport, in developing healthy youth (Larson, 2000, Petitpas et al., 2005). Further, the National Research Council Institute of Medicine (NRIM,...
View the summary of this research here. Project summary Research Objectives: Participation in youth sport is associated with a variety of positive developmental outcomes among adolescents, however studies of recreational and competitive youth sport contexts have revealed stressors which include...
Project Summary Purpose: Several studies have reported an age-related decline of physical activity (PA). We examined the impact of four transitional periods—adolescence, the beginning of post-secondary education, entry into the labour market, and parenthood—on the PA of participants in the...
Project Summary Among the various opportunities young people have to practise sports, school sports are of particular interest because the ultimate goal of schools is to shape our future citizens. Although school sport has become increasingly popular in Canada, there...
Project Summary In both youth sport and education, children and adolescents are grouped into cohorts by using annual age grouping policies, whereby a child must be a certain age by a specified selection date (e.g., December 315). Relative age describes...
Project Summary This study sought to understand how family relationships, interactions, and values are shaped by children’s sport involvement, and the social and cultural context in which their sport participation occurs. The themes that emerged from this study reflect the...
Project Summary This research aimed to identify the nature of various social influences determining increased commitment to continue sport involvement among middle-aged and older sport participants. Research was conducted among samples from international-, national-, and regional-level masters sport (> 35...
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