Research / Safety in Youth Sport
TOPIC
Safeguarding in Sport
Sport builds close, trusted relationships between athletes, coaches, and staff. We study how to keep athletes of every age safe from abuse.
WHY IT MATTERS
Millions of people play sports.
Prevention hasn’t kept up.
Research on violence in sport is spread across many fields and uses different definitions, so sport organizations often lack clear evidence on what keeps athletes safe. Few youth sport organizations use prevention strategies that have been tested.
28 M
U.S. youth ages 6 to 17 played on a sports team or took sports lessons in 2023 to 2024. (National Survey of Children’s Health)
3 in 4
adults who played organized sport as children in six European countries reported experiencing interpersonal violence in sport before age 18. (Hartill et al., 2023)
WHAT WE’RE LEARNING
Severity is challenging to measure
Researchers classify the severity of interpersonal violence in many different ways: our review with the International Olympic Committee found 22 dimensions across 45 measurement tools.
Abuse was common, and often severe
In a survey of 126 adults who played youth football, 96% reported at least one form of abuse in the sport, and more than half had experiences classified as severe.
Few told anyone
None of the 78 former players punished with excessive exercise reported it, and even among those hit with a fist or object, only about 1 in 4 did.
LIBRARY
Projects and research stories on sport
