ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on university athletes in the United States and Canada, where high-level sport for the young adult age group is often under the organizational umbrella of post-secondary institutions, as compared to European or Australian sport that is often organized in community, regional, or national organizations. It provides a key concussion-related risk reducing behaviors in the pre-injury period, at the time of injury, and post-injury. The chapter discusses psychosocial aspects of concussion-related behavior among university athletes is framed using a social ecologic model in which individual athletes are embedded in a broader intrapersonal, institutional, community, and societal context. It suggests that individual behaviors related to concussion-related outcomes need to be understood within a multilevel framework that views the individual as nested within broader interpersonal, institutional, and cultural contexts, extant research tends to focus on individual behaviors. University sport organizations vary in their policies related to athletes’ early identification and removal from play of post-concussion.
