In the RISE Youth Sport Lab, we study the ways in which athletes feel safe and included in sport, recreation, and leisure environments and how they experience injury and risk within these spaces. We are particularly interested in how risk of injury is communicated—for instance, through education, public messaging, or in specific team environments—and how that communication impacts athletes' attitudes and behaviours surrounding participation. We work from a critical perspective and largely use qualitative or mixed methods to investigate these dynamics.
Risk
Risk is a broad concept that carries significant influence on how and why we act the way we do within sport and recreation environments and beyond. By studying risk, we believe our research can provide new and important insight into behaviours of athletes, coaches and others involved in youth sport.
Injury
Injury is a part of participation in sport and recreation spaces. When we move our bodies, there's always the chance that may experience an injury. Understanding young people's perceptions, experiences and approaches to injuries is a large part of what we do in the RISE Youth Sport Lab.
Safety
In some ways, safety is the opposite of risk and injury. Pursing safe youth sport is a priority in our research, but not just in a physical sense. Safety can encompass many aspects of one's comfort level participating in a youth sport space (e.g., emotional safety, psychological safety, etc.). This broad understanding of safety represents a core component of our work.
Equity
Equity recognizes that risk, injury and safety are not experienced in the same ways by different people. The characteristics that make us who we are (e.g., race, gender, sex, sexuality, etc.) ultimately influence the ways in which someone may access education, treatment or support, or the ways in which they feel welcome and a sense of belonging. Understanding these differences is an important part of working towards equitable, inclusive sport.