Prerna K's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: Psychological Responses to Injury Recovery in High school Athletes
BASIS Advisor: Amy Anderson
Internship Location:
Onsite Mentor:



Project Abstract

The prevalence of injuries within highschool athletes continues to expand as pressures, competition, and expectations arise for athletes. Despite the physical recovery and return, the mental and psychological recovery and reset plays a vital role in an athletes success upon their return. Typically, once an athlete is injured, most attention is brought to their physical recovery but it has been expressed through past research that their mental recovery needs similar attention. Past research has studied how this willingness is impacted by factors of severity of injury or different stages of rehabilitation, but a common factor that alters the pressures faced by highschool athletes in specific is the level of competition they compete in. This study aims to determine how the psychological willingness of highschool athletes to return to their sport post injury differs as dependent on competition level.

    My Posts:

  • Conclusion (Last week!)

    Hey everyone! To end of my project, I would like to talk about some of the implications and further research concluded by my research. Although my research did not conclude if athletes' psychological readiness to return differed between different competition levels, there was a greater understanding towards behaviors within high school athletes recovery and return... Read More

  • Week 10

    Hey everyone! This week I am going to talk about part 2 of my data analysis! As said last week, when looking at all the survey responses as a whole, my data as found inconclusive. Because of this. I decided to separate the athletes between sports and analyze if there were any trends within sports. By... Read More

  • Week 9

    Hi everyone! This week I am going to talk about part one of my data analysis on the survey responses! So to begin, the only information taken from the background questions was from the question asking what team the athlete played for. The Yes/No questions, because they were optional, did not receive sufficient responses so... Read More

  • Week 8

    Hey everyone! This week I am going to be talking about some of the limitations of my research. So first off a limitation was the qualifications to participate in the study. To participate in the survey and interviews, the athlete had to currently be in highschool, where the estimated age range was around ages 13... Read More

  • Week 7

    Hey guys! This week I’m going to talk about my interviews! Athletes could sign up for the interviews through the survey. But to keep survey responses anonymous, a separate link was attached to the survey for athletes to open and sign up for the interview. They were asked to sign a second consent form, and... Read More

  • Week 6

    Hey everyone! This week I am going to talk about a study done by Mayo Clinic (my site placement) about injury prevention, specifically within collegiate sports. The title of the study is "Epidemiology of collegiate injuries for 15 sports: summary and recommendations for injury prevention initiatives" by Hootman et al. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic... Read More

  • Week 5

    Hey everyone! I have started a little bit of data analysis as this is my last week collecting data through the survey. I have received a little under 50 responses so far, which was around my goal sample size. My research mainly consist of analyzing quantitative data, which is focused on the responses to the "Injury-Psychological... Read More

  • Week 4

    Hey guys! This week I’m going to talk a little bit about my site placement! I am working with Dr.Steven Poon and Dr.Carter Jones from the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine and Orthopedic departments. I have been reading clinical trials and research studies done by Mayo in the past and some current ongoing studies.  Since ongoing... Read More

  • Week 3

    Hey everyone! I'm going to talk about some of my data collection so far. So my official survey has been sent out for a little while now and I've been receiving responses. Though my past post on methodology has covered some of my survey,  I will be going into more detail about my survey questions,... Read More

  • Week 2

    Welcome to Week 2! This week I am  going to talk about what I mean by competition levels and why I chose to focus on this. The paper in specific that introduced this gap for me was a study done by  Clement et al. (2015)  titled “Psychological Responses During Different Phases of Sport-Injury Rehabilitation: A... Read More

  • Week 1

    Hey guys! I’m going to talk about some of my methodology. I have been reaching out to athletic directors and coaches in order to send out my survey. My survey consists of background questions, the Injury-Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport Scale, and some open ended questions. Examples of the background questions include asking about... Read More

  • Intro Blog Post

    Hey! I'm Prerna Kumari and I'm a senior at BASIS Phoenix.  My research is on the psychological side to injury recovery, and its contributions to an athletes psychological readiness to return back to sport(RTS) post injury. Podlog et al. in their study “Psychological readiness to return back to sport following injury” defines psychological readiness as... Read More