Evaluating safety and risk awareness in contact sports: development of a quantitative survey for elite rugby

Introduction: Considerable media attention has recently focused on an increased number of professional athletes that experience forced retirement due to severe injuries. Despite the highly completive, physical nature and tolerance of risk in contact sports, no Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) awareness-related measurement instrument exists in professional sports. As part of a wider project, this study aimed to develop a survey instrument to evaluate risk and safety awareness in sports, taking elite rugby (union) as an example. Methods: Based on the identified conceptual framework incorporating theories from the OSH discipline, the survey has been updated for three rounds according to the feedback from a multidisciplinary team of experts before the pilot test. The pilot test data (n=46, response rate 76.7%) were imported to SPSS for analysis and validation. The survey's key themes included health outlook, tackle behavior, awareness of risk acceptance, reasons for risk-taking, and safety consideration for other players. Results: Overall, the survey has a high internal consistency (Cronbach's α= 0.742). Some sections of the survey require a further factor analysis, such as awareness of risk acceptance during the competition (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy - KMO <0.767, p<0.001) and reasons for risk-taking (KMO<0.604, p=0.003). Some sections require a larger sample size for further validation, such as safety consideration for other players (KMO<0.481, p<0.001). Conclusion: This is the first survey that evaluates players' safety and risk awareness in rugby drawing upon OSH concepts. Such a survey has the potential to improve athletes' health and wellbeing by customized educational intervention, which could point the way forward for its application in a wider range of sport settings internationally.