Fight Medicine Research Institute

Version of recordOriginal research

Concussion Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours Among Australian Taekwondo Athletes

A Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study

Daniel A Brown, John Whitting, Zachary Crowley-McHattan, Mike Climstein, Luke Del Vecchio. 2025. Sports.

Published in Sports, a peer-reviewed journal

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3390/sports13110409

Read the full textPDF filesPubMed 41295792

The medical question

What do fighters know and believe about concussion, and does that affect whether they report symptoms?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about how fighters recognize a concussion, whether they disclose symptoms, and why some return to training or competition early. The study’s self-reported survey design and its sample of taekwondo athletes determine which questions it can inform.

Summary

In a survey of 98 Australian taekwondo athletes, attitude scores were more consistently associated with safer concussion reporting intentions than knowledge scores were.

What the work reports

  • Adult taekwondo athletes in Australia answered an anonymous online survey between November 2024 and August 2025. It covered concussion history and reporting behavior and included the Rosenbaum Concussion Knowledge and Attitudes Survey, which gives a knowledge score out of 25 and an attitude score out of 75.
  • Mean scores were 19.8 out of 25 for knowledge and 61.6 out of 75 for attitudes. 92% said they would seek medical attention for a suspected concussion. However, 21% reported returning to training or competition on the same day as a suspected concussion, 22% reported hiding symptoms from medical staff, and 23% reported hiding symptoms from a coach.
  • In the authors’ exploratory regression models, higher attitude scores were associated with greater odds of intending to seek medical attention (odds ratio 1.18) and of intending to report a concussion (odds ratio 1.16). The authors report that knowledge scores showed no consistent association with behavior, and conclude that education needs to address beliefs and motivations as well as factual knowledge.

Limits to keep in mind

  • Cross-sectional and self-reported. The answers describe what athletes said they did or would do, not behavior that was observed, and the authors note that recall and a wish to give acceptable answers may have affected them.
  • The authors could not calculate a response rate and note possible self-selection, since athletes with more interest in concussion may have been more likely to take part.
  • The authors state that the sample is a small proportion of active Australian taekwondo athletes, and 92% held a black belt. The findings may not carry over to other taekwondo athletes or to other combat sports.
  • The authors describe the analyses as exploratory. Many group comparisons were run, which raises the risk of a false-positive result.

Publication status and notices

Published in Sports, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Sports.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

PDF files

PDF files are free to open. The first time, this website asks you to register once with your name and email address; after that, PDF files open directly on this browser. The registration page says what is kept, under the Privacy Policy.

Article details

Relationship
External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.
Published online
13 November 2025
Repository date
13 November 2025 (Europe PMC first-publication date)
Date used here
13 November 2025 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)
Rights
CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No text or figure from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.
Source check
, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.
Appraisal
The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.
Clinical review
None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.
Funding and conflicts
The article states that the research received no external funding and that the authors declare no conflicts of interest. The authors acknowledge Australian Taekwondo for help with participant recruitment and survey distribution.
Catalog
FH-043, added

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Daniel A Brown, John Whitting, Zachary Crowley-McHattan, Mike Climstein, Luke Del Vecchio. Concussion Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviours Among Australian Taekwondo Athletes: A Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study. Sports. 2025;13(11):409. https://doi.org/10.3390/sports13110409

RISBibTeXCSL JSONEndNote

Related on this website