PREDICTING INJURY RISK IN ADOLESCENT FOOTBALL PLAYERS - THE IMPORTANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL VARIABLES

Explored the relationship of anger/aggression, attention, and stressfu l life events to injury while addressing the methodological limitation s of prior studies. An additional objective was to determine whether t he relationship of stressful life events to injury is mediated either by anger (directed either inward or outward) or by impaired attention, either vigilant (broad, external) or focused (narrow, internal). At t he beginning of summer practice, 120 first-string high school football players completed measures of anger (Framingham Anger Scale), vigilan t attention (Symbol Digit Modalities test), focused attention (Pursuit subtest, MacQuarrie Test of Mechanical Ability), and stressful life e vents (abbreviated form of the Social Readjustment Rating Scale as mod ified for use with adolescents by Coddington, 1972). Players were then followed through one season to identify those injured. Logistic regre ssion indicated that high anger directed outward (p < .05) and low foc used attention (p < .01) increased injury risk, while stressful life e vents and vigilant attention interacted. Injury risk was elevated when recent stress was present (p < .05), and increased as vigilance decre ased, suggesting that stressful life events elevate injury risk by red ucing vigilance.