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Abstract

Sport-concussion is an established concern amongst athletes, sports bodies, and the wider society. Many sports now have concussion-specific protocols, such as the Head Injury Assessment for suspected concussion (SC) in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL). Further focus on sport-concussion comes via live broadcasting, which exposes large audiences to concussion, including commentary about it. Whilst previous studies have raised public health concerns about sport-concussion commentary, it is unclear if this problem persists, and a method for quantifying the issue has been lacking. This study followed established test-development processes to construct and psychometrically test a new Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-concussion Commentary (CARSCC). Items were derived from relevant literature, refined through health professional expert review, and found to have excellent interrater reliability and convergent validity. Two independent scorers used the CARSCC to evaluate the commentary of 15 randomly selected SCs from the 2024 NRL season. Eight SCs had commentary that was found to have both strengths and weaknesses, with none receiving full marks. Six SCs had no or very brief commentary, and four commentaries scored zero. There is room to improve concussion commentary in live sports broadcasting of NRL games, particularly referencing player safety and concussion protocols. Future applications of the CARSCC include as a field guide for commentators, or in training for accurate and responsible SC messaging.

Keywords

traumatic brain injury mass media mass communication concussion sport rugby

Sport-concussion is a leading cause of injury in contact sports, such as rugby union and rugby league, Australian rules football, and American football (Gardener et al., 2014; Gardner et al., 2015; Sunderland et al., 2024). Research, media and public interest in sport-concussion has been increasing (Ansari et al., 2024; Guay et al., 2016), partly because of links to chronic neurodegenerative disease in some individuals (Manley et al., 2017). A well-informed public is important for correct sport-concussion identification and management (Elkington et al., 2019), and the mass media can play a role in public sport-concussion awareness.

The mass media is often used for public health messaging and has been effective in driving positive health beliefs and behaviours (Stead et al., 2019). In contact sports such as Australian National Rugby League (NRL), which has a high rate of concussion (King et al., 2022), top-tier professional matches garner significant media attention. In 2020, approximately six million people aged 14 years or older (29% of the Australian population) regularly watched televised NRL games (Roy Morgan Research, 2020). Indeed, the significant media attention on professional sports, such as the NRL, has opened new avenues for concussion research.

Publicly available audiovisual professional match records produced by the mass media or leagues are increasingly being used by researchers to study concussion. These records have been used to investigate the events associated with sport-concussion. Examples include studies of the tackle type (Dane et al., 2024; Shill et al., 2023) and frequency (Hannah et al., 2019; Rotundo et al., 2023); direction and location of impact (Pellman et al., 2003; Sokol-Randell et al., 2021; Weber et al., 2022); and if player position is associated with injury risk (e.g., defence or attack; (West et al., 2022). These records have also been used for injury identification and management by tracking when players were returned or removed from a game (Gardner et al., 2017; Okoroha et al., 2019; West et al., 2022). These analyses have utilised visual information from match records, including the application of a video-based operational definition for recognising suspected sport-concussion (Davis et al., 2019).

The auditory component of these records, specifically the broadcast commentary, is potentially an underutilised resource for studying concussion, including how this component influences public sport-concussion awareness. Further, the broadcast commentary audio stream can offer unique insights into sport-concussion messages related to local sport culture that would be missed in vision-only analyses yet have the potential to shape important perceptions about injury (such as who is to blame for an injury, and if players can “shake it off”). It is important to recognise that the broadcast commentary can be offered by people with differing credentials, perspectives, obligations, and interrelationships with sports, leagues and other entities (Deubert et al., 2016; including sports journalists, ex-players and coaches, and in-house reporters; Nölleke & Perreault, 2023; Perreault et al., 2024; Sadri et al., 2024; Uriely et al., 1999). Live sport broadcast commentators are not employed as health professionals, yet their public presentation is often as “experts”, and they discuss sport-concussion. To cover this topic appropriately, some commentators may want guidance from health professionals in relation to accurate messaging, just as they may rely on guidance for discussing other topics, such as gender (International Olympic Committee, 2024).

A small number of studies have examined the broadcast commentary from contact sport in relation to sport-concussion (e.g., Kennard et al., 2018). These studies have found that poor quality messages, sometimes termed misconceptions, misinformation or misleading messages, have been communicated about sport-concussion. For example, a content analysis of the sport-concussion commentary from the 2010 and 2011 NRL seasons revealed a lack of focus on player safety and provision of factual information (Kennard et al., 2018). The finding of poor sport-concussion messaging from the Kennard and colleagues’ (2018) study is consistent with other media-focussed studies (Aitken et al., 2016; Jeckell et al., 2024). Together, these analyses show that the mass media, including live sport broadcast commentary, can misinform the public about sport-concussion.

To address the problem of poor-quality sport-concussion messaging in live sport broadcasts two studies have examined the effects of changing the message (Ku et al., 2020; Lappin et al. under review). The experimental study of Ku and colleagues found that supplementing the original broadcast information (i.e., the audiovisual stream) with overlaid, written information about injury management (e.g., this player was removed/remained) improved concussion recognition, when the information was accurate in the context of injury management. By comparison, (Lappin et al., under review) did not show improved concussion recognition from changed audio information (commentary) only. Despite these mixed findings, it appears that accurate sport-concussion information during live sport broadcasts has the potential to improve public awareness.

In addition, to empirical findings suggesting potential public health benefits from changing concussion commentary, a theoretical pathway for such benefits exists via models such as cultivation (Romer et al., 2014) and agenda-setting theory (Wanta & Alkazemi, 2017). These models support the idea that the mass media can shape people’s attitudes, although its effects may be gradual and context dependent. In the case of sport-concussion, while these theories predict the media will contribution to concussion awareness, for sport-players other important contributing factors will likely include coaching culture, parental influence, and peer norms (Nedimyer et al., 2023; Register-Mihalik et al., 2018). For general, non-player audiences, the commentary might play a more pivotal role in shaping concussion attitudes.

The recognition of the potential role played by the mass media on public awareness of sport-concussion led to the development of media guidelines for sport-concussion (Ahmed & Hall, 2017; Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022), and training for future journalists (Parrott et al., 2024). This use of media guidelines to improve public health messaging is already established for mental health and suicide (World Health Organization, 2017), cancer (New South Wales Government, n.d), road collisions (Laker, n.d), dementia (Dementia Australia, 2024), and gender in sport (International Olympic Committee, 2024). When evaluated, this broad approach is considered effective (Bohanna & Wang, 2012; Flego et al., 2022; Skehan et al., 2006). In the sport-concussion context, the first media guidelines were published almost ten years ago (Ahmed & Hall, 2017). More recently, expanded guidelines were published by the Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022). Both guidelines advise on matters such as avoiding colloquialisms and qualifiers (e.g., “mild”) when referring to sport-concussion to avoid minimising injury. However, the existing guidelines were not specifically designed for sport-concussion commentary, and since neither version can be scored, they do not readily support change evaluation.

The success of guidelines for accurate and responsible sport-concussion commentary, including quantifiable tools, may depend on whether sport-commentators are individually motivated to provide such commentary. For example, whether sport-commentators would want to attend training to support best practice in sport-concussion commentary. However, the personal motivations of sport-commentators to undertake such actions can also be considered in light of their employment arrangements, and the significant pressures applied by clubs and leagues on the media coverage of sport (Deubert et al., 2016). Some of these tensions for sports-commentators have been formally documented. For example, in Kunert and Kuni’s (2023) interview study with 28 soccer commentators, expertise versus entertainment role tensions were acknowledged. Despite such tensions, Kunert and Kuni (2023) found that “most commentators….value journalistic values over entertainment values” (p. 631). At the individual level at least, although commentary style was seen as an individual’s choice, a majority of commentors appear internally motivated to value ideas such as being “objective”. Thus, commentators may be motivated to provide accurate and responsible information about concussion, and by extension, could be willing to seek support or training to do so, especially if backed by employers.

Given that several studies have shown that the media commentary about sport-concussion is problematic, and conversely, that there could be public health benefits from improving it, it is vital that sport-concussion is depicted in an accurate and responsible manner to promote positive and safe concussion attitudes in the interest of public health. At present there is no tool in existence that quantifies the public health messaging of sport-concussion commentary, and which could in turn evaluate efforts to improve it. Furthermore, it is unknown whether there are persisting issues in the broadcast commentary of professional rugby league (c.f. Kennard et al., 2018). To address these issues, this study aimed to follow a rigorous process to develop a sport-concussion commentary guideline in a quantifiable format (a checklist) and apply this checklist to evaluate its properties and analyse the broadcast commentary in games from the 2024 NRL season.

Method

This research was part of a larger body of research related to mass media and sport-concussion. Study approvals were granted by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT)’s Human Research Ethics Committee (approval no.: 8510) and Health, Safety, and Environment Risk Assessment Hub (approval no.: 12695). The development of the Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-concussion Commentary (CARSCC) was informed by recommendations for scale construction for health, social, and behavioural research (Boateng et al., 2018).

Phase One: Developing the Checklist

Checklist items were generated following a review of the concussion literature and an evaluation of existing media concussion guidelines and recommendations (Ahmed & Hall, 2017; Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022). This process revealed that the reporting should: avoid trivialising the injury and spreading misinformation about sport-concussion by using correct injury terms (Ahmed & Hall, 2017; Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022; Kennard et al., 2018; White et al., 2022); avoid glorifying playing when injured, blaming players, or referring to injuries or injury evaluations as inconvenient (Australian Rugby League Commission, 2019; Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022; White et al., 2022), and; distinguish between suspected concussion (an impact event with concussion signs) and diagnosed concussion (known only after formal off-field assessment by trained specialist personnel), including when discussing return-to-play (Ahmed & Hall, 2017; Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022; Ku et al., 2020). The commentary should also be focussed on player safety and wellbeing (Ahmed & Hall, 2017). While some recommendations exist for the media portrayal of sport-concussion, we considered these out of scope for commentary guidelines. One resource (Ahmed & Hall, 2017) is for print/online media use, and is very brief. The other resource (Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022) encompasses several recommendations which were considered beyond broadcast commentators’ expertise or responsibility (such as reporting where formal concussion assessment take place and their duration).

The CARSCC was designed to bridge these gaps and ensure that a resource exists which is tailored to live sport-concussion commentary. Twelve items were constructed from this literature review and are shown in Table 1. Three possible scores were proposed: item scores, a total score, and an overall impression score. The item scores were awarded using a 3-point scale (0 = criterion not met; 1 = partially met; 2 = fully met). The total score was the sum of item scores (possible score range of 0–24). The overall impression score was awarded using a 5-point scale (1 = well below average, 2 = below average, 3 = average, 4 = above average and 5 = well above average). For all scores, higher scores indicate more accurate and responsible sport-concussion commentary.

Table 1.

Draft Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-Concussion Commentary (CARSCC) Criteria With Source Attribution.

Source	Criteria
Ahmed and Hall (2017)	1. The commentary did not make light of, or underplay, the seriousness of the injury
Ahmed and Hall (2017) and Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022)	2. The commentary did not use severity modifiers when describing the injury i.e. ‘mild’ or ‘serious’ concussion
	3. The commentary did not use colloquial terms to describe the injury i.e. head knock, in place of the correct terminology (concussion or brain injury)
Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022)	4. The commentary did not claim that the player received a concussion before an assessment was conducted by a medical (or other qualified) professional
Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022)	5. The commentary referred to the concussion protocol for all head impacts or rapid head movements accompanied by a visible concussion sign (e.g., stumbling, difficulty standing, appearing dazed)
Ahmed and Hall (2017)	6. The commentary did not use or suggest false return-to-play timescales (e.g., remaining in play or returning before medical / formal assessment)
White et al. (2022)	7. The focus of the commentary was centred around the safety and wellbeing of the player with the suspected concussion
Australian Rugby League Commission (2019)	8. The commentary mentioned the possibility of long-term implications of concussion (e.g., for retirement, health), especially for injured players with a verified history of multiple concussions
Australian Rugby League Commission (2019)	9. The commentary explained that the concussion protocol (e.g., Head injury assessment) is conducted for player safety
Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022)	10. The commentary did not glorify “playing on” (remaining in play) with a suspected concussion
Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022)	11. The commentary did not present the injury as an inconvenience or interruption (or similar) to the game
White et al. (2022)	12. The commentary did not ‘blame’ the player for their injury (e.g., letting the team down)

Note. Item 8 was dropped after expert review.

Expert Review

Boateng et al. (2018) recommends consulting with 5–7 experts to help establish the content validity of new rating scales. A convenience sample of eight registered health professionals (psychologists) with concussion expertise from two Australian states (Queensland and New South Wales) were emailed and invited to evaluate the CARSCC. Rugby league is the most popular form of football in these two Australian states as measured by participation and game attendance (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009) and these states are known locally as its “heartland” (Roy Morgan Research, 2020). Five of these people agreed to participate, meeting Boateng et al.’s (2018) recommendations.

A link was emailed to the experts together with study information. Data were collected via a brief, online survey, created and administered using Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com; Qualtrics®, 2022, CoreXM, Commercial Use). The survey sought anonymous comments for each proposed item, and an item vote (retain or reject). It also sought opinions on scoring (e.g., weighting items) and overall observations about the proposed scale and broad topic area (via an agreement scale and free text responses). Prior to reviewing the expert feedback, parameters were set to inform the decision to retain/reject items. Specifically, it was decided that an item would be rejected if more than half of experts recommended the removal of this item.

Item Selection and Scale Adjustments

While most items (11/12) received “retain” ratings, three out of five experts recommended rejecting item 8 (the commentary… [should mention]… the possibility of long-term implications of concussion (e.g., for retirement, health), especially for injured players with a verified history of multiple concussions). Free-text comments about this item raised concerns that it might be “misleading”, out of scope (not commentator’s “role”), or foster “undue concern” about recovery from concussion. Since item 8 failed the a priori threshold for retention it was removed from further consideration. Some concerns about item 3 (“minimal incremental value”) and item 5 (“too wordy”) were also reported, but each of these comments was offered by one expert only, and therefore item 3 was retained.

Most of the experts (80%) agreed or strongly agreed that “commentary is important for public awareness of concussion” and all experts agreed or strongly agreed that “the CARSCC would be valuable for quantifying accurate and responsible…[sport-concussion] commentary”. Four out of five experts agreed or strongly agreed that the total score would be valid, with three experts agreeing that the overall impression score would have value. Three experts agreed or strongly agreed that the items should be equally weighted. Excluding the item 8 concerns, one expert recommended a reduced weighting for items 2, 3, and 9, and a comment was received about item directionality (i.e., consider rewording the first few items to put them in the affirmative). Given this feedback, we decided that brief commentary (e.g., minimal or limited sport-concussion commentary) should not be able to obtain full marks, so we created a penalised total score for such instances (halving of the total score). This decision was taken because points were awarded for avoiding known pitfalls (e.g., not using an incorrect or minimising qualifier such as “mild” concussion), therefore a correction was required to avoid a high score just because of brevity. Additionally, it was decided that if the commentary did not discuss a suspected concussion, it would be awarded a total score of zero.

Phase Two: Applying the Checklist

Stimulus set

For this phase, we developed a live broadcast stimulus set featuring commentary of on-field incidents of suspected concussion. This set was constructed from NRL-compiled publicly available play-by-play information documenting relevant on-field incidents (i.e., a suspected concussion that triggered a formal off-field concussion assessment, known as a Head Injury Assessment [HIA]) and recordings from live match broadcasts (National Rugby League, n. d.). In 2024, the NRL’s 117^th season, there were 27 competition rounds. We extracted data from competition rounds one through eight (i.e., approximately, the first third of the season). During this period, 64 games were played, and there were 69 documented on-field suspected concussions (hereafter referred to as HIAs).

A random selection of 15 of the 69 HIAs (∼20%) was made for further use in this study. These events were chosen as follows: First, we created a numbered and chronologically-ordered (earliest-to-most recent) event list with the following details: round and game number, injured player information, time of HIA (timestamp). Next, a random number generator (Randomness and Integrity Services Ltd, n. d.) was used to produce 15 numbers between 1 and 69, and the corresponding HIAs from the event list were selected for further study. Next, the lead author (KL) used the timestamp information to create 15 HIA audiovisual clips (.mp4 files). Each clip had a duration matching the commentary, with the longest lasting 144 seconds (i.e., from the start of the timestamp until a change of commentary topic).

Interrater Reliability and Convergent Validity

Two scorers (KL, MR) independently reviewed each event. The scorers were fourth-year students in a psychology Honours degree. We did not set restrictions on the scorers, such as their knowledge of sport. One scorer was a study author, and the other scorer was naïve about the study. The events were played by each scorer on their own computers and both scorers were able to replay the events as necessary. When each event was played, the scorer saw the commercially produced footage of an on-field event (HIA) including slow motion replays (if originally broadcast) and associated sounds, including the broadcast commentary. Next, the scorers used the CARSCC to produce their round 1 scores for the commentary from each of the 15 events.

A review of round 1 scores was instigated to identify any discrepancies between the scorers. This process was used to ensure the correct application of the tool, as recommended by Boateng et al. (2018). The scorers met in person to discuss how they interpreted the criteria, without sharing their scores. This discussion revealed occasional misunderstandings in the application of CARSCC criteria (e.g., confusing the term knock on, which refers to an NRL play, with the term head knock, which is a colloquialism in NRL commentary for sport-concussion). The discussion resolved these issues, and the independent scoring process was repeated, yielding the round 2 scores.

Analysis

The CARSCC total and overall impressions scores awarded by each scorer in both rounds for each of the 15 clips are shown in Table 2. Compared to the round 1 scores, there was a significant reduction in the mean score difference between the scorers at round 2. Round 2 scores were therefore used in all subsequent analyses.

Table 2.

Comparison of CARSCC Mean Total, Adjusted Total, and Overall Impression Scores From Two Independent Scorers on Two Occasions (Round 1 and 2).

	Round 1			Round 2
	Scorer 1	Scorer 2	Mdiff	Scorer 1	Scorer 2	Mdiff
Total score	13.27	9.93	3.34	12.67	12.2	0.47
Penalised total	11.63	7.67	3.96	11.63	11.23	0.40
Overall impression	2.27	1.93	0.34	2.4	2.13	0.27

Note. Mdiff = Mean Difference. Round 1 = initial scoring; Round 2 = scoring after discussion of the criteria. Total score = sum of individual CARSCC item scores. Penalised Total = halved total score for penalised brief commentary. Overall impression scores were rated on a five-point rating scale. For all scores, higher scores indicate more accurate and responsible commentary. CARSCC = Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-concussion Commentary.

The interrater reliability for the CARSCC total score (or penalised total, if applicable) was calculated using an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and compared to established frameworks (Koo & Li, 2016). This process revealed excellent interrater reliability, ICC = .996, 95% CI [.987, .999]. Convergent validity was examined by correlating the total (or adjusted total) score with the overall impression score awarded by each scorer. For each scorer, there was a very strong, positive and statistically significant Pearson correlation coefficient between these scores (For all clips, n = 15: scorer 1, r = .99, p < .001; scorer 2, r = .98, p < .001. Excluding zero-scored clips (no commentary), n = 11: scorer 1, r = .97, p < .001; scorer 2: r = .92 p > .001).

To analyse the current commentary, the mean total (or penalised total) and item scores were examined. The total score averaged across the two scorers was 11.43 (SD = 8.12) and the mean overall impression score was 2.27 (SD = 1.66). From the pool of 15 clips, four (∼25%) received a score of zero because they contained no commentary of the HIA that was recorded on the NRL database (play-by-play data). Notably, a further two clips attracted penalised (halved) total scores, as they were judged as having brief commentary. In both cases the commentary briefly acknowledged that a player had been negatively impacted, however the commentary moved on very quickly to unrelated topics, such as, promoting upcoming games.

The four no commentary clips were further analysed to determine the match context, based on the associated vision. In all four instances we judged that concussion signs were evident (e.g., a tackled player was on the ground, kneeling or slow to stand), which could have, but did not, trigger the commentary. In one instance, the sports trainer was on the field, near the player, signalling a HIA. In another instance, during a break in play, the match referee was heard telling a player they must leave the field for HIA reasons, but the commentary does not note it. In this particular clip, around the time when the referee's instruction is heard, a line of text was televised next to the score indicating that the player was being removed for a HIA. In three of these instances the player was not immediately removed from the field post event, and in two of them the event was quickly followed by a major score.

The frequency of CARSCC item scores (Table 3) was examined as an indication of relative strengths (i.e., frequently endorsed “fully met” items), relative weaknesses (infrequently endorsed “not met” items), and borderline commentary features (items that were neither frequently nor infrequently endorsed). Using this method, there were four relative commentary strengths (not glorifying playing when injured, not using injury severity modifiers, and not making premature claims about formal diagnosis or suggesting false return-to-play timelines), one relative commentary weakness (failing to relate off-field assessment to player safety), and four borderline features (use of colloquial injury names, making light of injury, implication of blame or inconvenience).

Table 3.

The Frequency of Scores Awarded by Two Scorers Across 12 CARSCC Criteria and Their Characterisations.

	Score frequency
Criteria	Not met^*	Partially met	Fully met
1-did not make light	8	10	12
2- did not use severity modifiers (S)	8	0	22
3- did not use colloquial language	13	4	13
4- did not claim concussion occurred (S)	8	0	22
5- Referred to concussion protocol (W)	20	3	7
6- did not suggest false RTP timescales (S)	8	2	20
7- Focussed on player safety	14	7	9
8- Explained protocol is for player safety (W)	28	2	0
9- did not glorify playing on (S)	8	1	21
10- did not present injury as inconvenient	8	9	13
11- did not blame the player	12	4	14
12- Commentary was sufficient	12	9	9

Note. N = 30 scores from round 2 (i.e., after discussion of the criteria) awarded by two scorers who each scored 15 HIAs. Score categories: Not met = 0, Partially met = 1; Fully met = 2. * The frequency of “not met” scores for each criterion includes eight counts of zero from four incidents that both scorers appraised as lacking relevant commentary. §Characterised as a commentary strength (S), Weakness (W). RTP = Return-to-play. CARSCC = Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-concussion Commentary.

Discussion

This study had two aims: to systematically develop a quantifiable checklist for guiding and scoring sport-concussion broadcast commentary; and to trial the checklist to test its properties and analyse the commentary of NRL-defined HIAs from the 2024 season. Several best-practice recommendations for scale development as outlined by Boateng et al. (2018), informed the development of the CARSCC. These recommendations include building item content from the literature, undertaking expert review for content validation, and preliminary testing, steps one, two and three, respectively.

The CARSCC content was chosen to create a broadcast commentary-specific resource for sport-concussion. Health professionals with concussion expertise reviewed the CARSCC content, and their anonymous feedback was used to refine it. Most experts were agreed that careful (accurate and responsible) media commentary is important for public sport-concussion awareness, warning that inaccurate messaging can worsen outcomes (e.g., by incorrectly setting expectations for prolonged symptoms from a single concussion). They agreed with the proposed scoring and item wording. The input of health professionals lends credibility to the CARSCC as a tool that broadcast commentators can use to guide accurate and responsible sport-concussion commentary.

The CARSCC development phase aimed to provide information about its psychometric properties. This pilot test showed that the CARSCC had good convergent validity (high inter-score correlations) and excellent interrater reliability after discrepancy review with clarification on the application of the CARSCC. Such clarification was needed because one scorer was not familiar with NRL and associated terminology. The broadcast commentary of sport is known to reflect local sport terms (Desmarais & Bruce, 2009), and familiarity with these aspects is important when using the CARSCC, otherwise user training should be considered. This small study provides indicative data, and further independent investigations of the CARSCC interrater reliability and other psychometric properties are recommended.

Phase two of this study provided a preliminary analysis of sport-concussion commentary from 15 (20%) randomly selected HIAs during the 2024 NRL season. A key finding was that almost one quarter of these HIAs went without comment or received limited broadcast commentary. While there may not be an expectation that broadcasters will comment about every HIA, and there could be good reasons they were not discussed (e.g., they were not captured in the footage, the commentators did not see/recognise them, they were discussed - but not contemporaneously with the timestamped event officially recorded by the NRL), it raises a question about whether all events should be mentioned for public education/awereness purposes. In our analysis of the four clips with no commentary, while match factors (e.g., a major score) were evident that footage, so too were concussion signs (e.g., a player having difficulty standing post tackle), and in two cases the HIA did not feature in the commentary, despite it being evident from the actions of match officials (trainer or referee). The brief (or absent) discussion about a sizable proportion of HIAs arguably represents a missed opportunity for public health messaging about sport-concussion and potentially contributes to misperceptions about how often it occurs. It also potentially limits our strengths and weakness CARSCC appraisal, since this had to be based on a subset of commentaries. By contrast, if all HIAs are mentioned in broadcast commentary when they occur or when formal diagnosis / a return-to-play decisions is known, it could support greater public awareness of sport-concussion and its management (including removal from play for suspected sport-concussion for formal diagnostic assessment). A key next step is to replicate this finding and if confirmed, determine why a high proportion of HIAs might have no or limited commentary. A further step is to determine if broadcasters can increase or modify their sport-concussion commentary, including using the CARSCC as a guideline or self-audit tool, and to test if these changes deliver public awareness benefits.

The application of the CARSCC to NRL sport-concussion commentary revealed both strengths and weaknesses from a health messaging perspective. There is room for improvement in communicating the link between formal off-field concussion assessment and player health and safety, as encouraged by the Concussion Legacy Foundation (2022). The use of colloquialisms instead of an agreed injury name has previously been recommended, and based on this study, it remains current. Public awareness of sport-concussion could be improved if NRL broadcasters changed terminology to suspected concussion (or concussion if diagnosed), instead of head knock or head clash. A further suggestion is that this commentary could be more strongly focussed on player wellbeing to help address the significant problem of sport-concussion symptom underreporting by athletes (Asken et al., 2016; Ferdinand Pennock et al., 2020; McGroarty et al., 2020). This change would entail avoiding statements that suggest that the player is to blame for their injury (e.g., “got his head in the wrong place”, “might have knocked himself out there”) or that activation of the concussion protocol represents an inconvenience (e.g., “He’s being forced off here by an HIA. It’s a shame, isn’t it?”).

The implementation of the CARSCC could also include as a field guide during live commentary, as an addition to training packages, or as an audit tool for trend evaluations. In live sport commentary, although a dynamic environment (Kunert & Kuni, 2023), the CARSCC could be used by commentators who, on seeing an incident, could refer to it, and if necessary adjust or revise their commentary about an event, including to make real time corrections if needed. Broadcasters may already issue and require commentary staff to follow their broadcast guidelines for other matters (Kunert & Kuni, 2023). An alternative model would see a producer or support staff member performing a check and recommending additional clarifying comments if needed, so that they can be promptly given including via clarifying text if required.

Another implementation route would be to incorporate the CARSCC into existing commentary training or certification programs for concussion reporting (Concussion Legacy Foundation, 2022; Parrott et al., 2024). Trained commentators may be more likely to be self-censoring and would be better prepared to avoid documented pitfalls. Adding the CARSCC to training and certification programs with existing links to broadcasters or journalism programs would bring the CARSCC to the attention of key stakeholders. Within these contexts, the CARSCC could be given to trainees along with audiovisual clips like the ones used in our study, or a sample of their own commentary for a suspected concussion, and trainees could practice identifying (or self-identifying) commentary strengths and weaknesses.

Some of the commentary changes encouraged in this paper, such as changing to a formal injury name, might been seen as easier to implement in live commentary than others, such as calling out each suspected concussion. For example, shifting naming conventions for gender in sport is supported through guidelines published by the International Olympic Committee (2024). In the NRL context, changing some naming conventions will require consultation with leagues since they set terms such as HIA. At a practical level, the requirement for commentators to call out all events may be considered challenging, even though this practice is recommended by the Concussion Legacy Foundation. A commentary team (or broadcaster) could plausibly set themselves two commentary objectives: a priority objective to immediately discuss all on-field incidents that trigger the concussion protocol (or as close as possible to when they occur); and a secondary objective, to ensure that any missed event is discussed at the next available opportunity which would include when the player leaves the field for testing, when the testing result is known, if the incident is replayed, or at the next play break. The CARSCC could be deployed as a audit tool to check progress against these objectives. It could also be used in independent research as a tool for formally evaluating change in sport-concussion broadcast commentary.

A relative strength in the analysed commentary revealed by the CARSCC was that it typically avoided terms like “minor” concussion, which are regarded as inaccurate (Ahmed & Hall, 2017). The analysed commentary also generally avoided glorifying playing with a suspected concussion, which has not always been the case (Kennard et al., 2018). This finding is consistent with another recent study that reported changes in the media portrayal of sport-concussion away from statements like “such is the life of gladiators”. To an extent, these apparent changes the commentary suggest that change is possible, even in dynamic live call contexts. The identification of commentary strengths, is of course relative, and while we currently lack baseline data for formal comparison and we cannot definitively characterise this as ‘change’, the observation does suggest improvement in some areas when compared to past studies (e.g., Kennard et al., 2018). The present study has also shown there is room for more improvement in concussion commentary, as there were no perfect scores, weaknesses were found, and several incidents went without commentary.

Our study has several limitations. First, the CARSCC development process did not reach Boateng et al.’s (2018) phase three recommended steps for scale evaluation and thus requires further testing to fully evaluate its psychometric properties. Additionally, it should be acknowledged that Boateng et al.’s (2018) recommendations are targeted at scales, rather than checklists such as the CARSCC. Hence, some recommendations were not applicable to the CARSCC (such as factor analysis). Related, the expert review panel lacked disciplinary diversity, and this could have influenced the review stage and final measure. Future studies should seek the other perspectives on the measures, such as those of sports journalists, broadcasters, or other professionals involved in live commentary. Third, although the CARSCC was intended to be applicable to the broadcast commentary of a wide range of sports, this cannot be determined from the present study. This current study applied the CARSCC to NRL commentary only, and findings may not generalise to other sports or geographical regions. Future research should seek to test the CARSCC with other sports. Fourth, the CARSCC was developed for the dual purpose of guiding and quantifying (evaluating) commentary, and while we tested its evaluative capacity, we have yet to establish its utility as a commentary field guide. Fifth, we proposed an arbitrary halving of the total CARSCC score to limit the maximum possible score of extremely brief commentary. While this method may prove acceptable, an alternative penalty system (differential weighting) could be considered instead. Our use of the pendalised total score could have influenced our interpretation. Finally, the commentary analysis was performed with a tool that we were developing, and this could have influenced the results.

The broadcast commentary of live professional sports by commercial entities faces many challenges (Desmarais & Bruce, 2009). Broadcast commentators and their employers are no doubt influenced by the sport’s culture and their audiences and can be subject to strong criticism (Parry et al., 2022). For broadcasters of contact sport, like the NRL, the focus on sport-concussion and its management has been rapidly changing (King et al., 2014), adding a further challenge for these commentators to keep pace with change. The broadcast commentator’s role is multifaceted, no doubt shaped by personal, legal, and professional motivations. It may exist for reasons such as entertainment (Kunert & Kuni, 2023), public relations (English, 2021), or as part of a “hyper-commercialised” media event or product (Cummins et al., 2019; Kunert & Kuni, 2023). Its primary purpose is not public health messaging, and yet empirical studies and theories suggest that broadcast commentary could play an important educative role in relation to sport-concussion. Broadcast information during live sports could be an avenue for improving public recognition of sport-concussion (Ku et al., 2020) and this is vital because awareness is low (King et al., 2014).

If we can improve the health messaging for sport-concussion in broadcast commentary, the benefits could take time to realise, they could be modest, and they may not be experienced by all audience members in the same way (Cummins et al., 2019; Nedimyer et al., 2023). Based on the past research by Cummins and colleagues (2019), we could expect interaction effects. Cummins and colleagues (2019) showed that televised sport broadcasts with and without the crowd-noise audio stream affected audience members differently, based on factors such as their knowledge or familiarity with the sport. In the sport-concussion context, this could mean that audiences who hold particular views about sport-concussion, or audiences who rate themselves highly informed about sport-concussion, might be insensitive to accurate and responsible messages about it, effectively ‘ignoring’ the commentary. Evidently, there could be nuanced benefits for concussion awareness from further consideration of the broadcast commentary. The efforts to support accurate and responsible sport-concussion commentary must be best understood as one component of the wider efforts needed to improve public awareness of sports concussion and its management.

The present study adds to the prior research into the public health-implications of sport-concussion messaging in live sport broadcast commentary (e.g., Kennard et al., 2018) and efforts to improve this commentary (e.g., Ahmed & Hall, 2017) by providing a targeted and quantifiable resource for broadcasters, as well as insights into changes that NRL broadcasters could make. While more input on the CARSCC is needed, including from broadcast commentators and sport stakeholders, the CARSCC has the potential to be used by commentators to improve their sport-concussion messaging. Items can be quickly reviewed to avoid known commentary pitfalls and ensure a greater focus on player safety. If the commentary can be changed in this way and potentially delivered as part of a wider campaign, this could improve public sport-concussion awareness.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the volunteers who participated in this study, the experts who contributed to the review, and the independent rater, Mikaela Richardson. Parts of this study were presented at the Annual National Academy of Neuropsychology Conference, 5 – 9 November 2024, Austin, Texas, United States of America.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethics Statement

ORCID iD

Karen A Sullivan

Data Availability Statement

The data will be shared upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.*

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Talking About Concussion and Getting It Right: Towards the Development and Psychometric Properties of a Checklist for Accurate and Responsible Sport-Concussion Commentary

Abstract

Keywords

Method

Phase One: Developing the Checklist

Expert Review

Item Selection and Scale Adjustments

Phase Two: Applying the Checklist

Stimulus set

Interrater Reliability and Convergent Validity

Analysis

Discussion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Ethics Statement

ORCID iD

Data Availability Statement

References